Knife Chat: Slicing to the meat of all things sharp

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

So my knife autism has led me into old USA-made Schrades. I always wrote Schrade off as a dead company's name slapped on Chineseum, but I had been ignoring all the stuff that dead company made.

Sooooo I have a Schrade Walden trapper and a USA-made Uncle Henry LB7 coming in this week and the bill was less than half of what it'd cost to buy a Buck 110 and a Case CV trapper new. Cleanup projects for sure but that's half the fun.

Occasionally I'll find old knives at some of the local antique stores, but a lot of them are priced way higher than they should be. Like I could buy a brand new Civivi or CRKT for less than what some of these places want for an old Schrade or similar knife.

I assumed that maybe Lodewijk was getting vintage knives on eBay.  Back in a former life, I was really into woodworking with traditional hand tools.  If you were serious using a western hand plane for instance, you didn't bother with the crap sold by most companies today; you looked for a Stanley Sweetheart or a Sargent from the 1920s or 1930s, which are much higher quality than anything made today (with the exception of a Lie Nielsen or a Veritas, but that's a whole other deep dive).   I used to pour over eBay listings to find good deals on rusty old specimens and then painstakingly rehabilitate them.  Which, as Lodewijk says, is half the fun. 

 

Ebay wants to act weird on mobile, which is mostly what I use these days, so I tend to avoid their site.

I do try to hit up local yard sales and estate sales to look for deals on old knives, though. I usually strike out, but occasionally I'll find something interesting. Whether it comes home with me or not all depends on the price on it.

[Lodewijk]

Trapper's cleaned up. This thing's great.

Just scrubbed the rust off and polished a bit... dig how the patina looks on the spey.

[MacWa77ace]

Looks really nice. I usually get some pitting if its really bad. What'd it look like before?

[MacWa77ace]

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

Trapper's cleaned up. This thing's great.

Just scrubbed the rust off and polished a bit... dig how the patina looks on the spey.

What did you use to polish the blade ?

I've got a Y-B Cigars promo knife from like the 40s or 50s and there's still a bit of tarnish on the blade where I cleaned off the rust. I took some fine grit sandpaper and got the majority off, but there's still enough on there to bug me.

[Lodewijk]

Looks really nice. I usually get some pitting if its really bad. What'd it look like before?

Speckled pretty good with rust but nothing heavy, looks like it mostly just sat in a drawer. I have one pitting spot but it's in an inoffensive place, just at the base of the blade above the tang stamp.

Trapper's cleaned up. This thing's great.

Just scrubbed the rust off and polished a bit... dig how the patina looks on the spey.

What did you use to polish the blade ?

I've got a Y-B Cigars promo knife from like the 40s or 50s and there's still a bit of tarnish on the blade where I cleaned off the rust. I took some fine grit sandpaper and got the majority off, but there's still enough on there to bug me.

Paste of baking soda and water, scrubbed each blade pretty good several times until it looked like I had all the rust off. Then a shop cloth barely dabbed in Mothers, just a very small amount of polish at a time, and did that a couple-three times over.

Went slow because I wanted to keep as much of what started to look like character as I could.

Brightened up a lot, but it was in pretty good shape to begin with.

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

Would something like Flitz work on knives with a little heavier tarnish ?

I've been meaning to pick up a tube of that stuff along with some dedicated knife lube (I've been using Lucas gun oil mostly these days).

[Lodewijk]

Flitz and Mothers are pretty similar. 

If you have a piece of steel that's discolored after removing rust (i.e. like the dark spots on my spey blade), and the idea is to get rid of them entirely, I'm guessing you'll need to remove them, not buff them.

Mothers is for finishing, basically... you might end up with a shiny piece of steel that's still more discolored than you want. 

Sodium bicarbonate is supposed to chemically react with oxidized steel in ways that I only dimly understand, but it DOES work. I'd start there to see if anything else comes off that sanding didn't remove, and then polish with Flitz or Mothers 3-5 times to see what it looks like. Both of those things are cheap and you can always go to something more abrasive if they don't do what you want.

I like a little character in old knives personally. As long as the steel is like protected from further rust, I call it good.

[Rednex]

Well Lodewijk got my mind a working. Went to Ebay to look at knives, Victorinox swiss army knives to be exact.

Well saw the low auction price's of $0.97 so made an account. I want to make a few one off SAK to my specifications. Buying new was expensive so now i wait for auctions to end to see final price. One seller i was watching sent me a message and offered it to me less then what it was listed for. Figure 8 bucks I wont loss much if I mess it up.

Then had an idea Christmas presents like a lot of 10 SAK classics for 15 bucks. I started this adventure yesterday after noon now look happened   

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

Speaking of Swiss army knives, I picked up a Swiss-Tech "Listig" today while I was at Walmart.

It's a little smaller than I'd expected, but not by much. It's just slightly smaller than a Wenger Swiss army knife I've had for awhile. Instead of 1.4116 (or whatever type of steel Victorinox or Wenger use), the "Listig" uses AUS-8 steel for the tools.

And at $11.68, it's also about 10 bucks cheaper than the Victorinox SD it's meant to compete with.

[JeeperCreeper]

Got another moose.

Tried out some knives this year when skinning/quartering/butchering.

Using boxing scores:

Havalon: 10/10. Crazy sharp as expected, but also likely to take a finger off

Mora carbon craftline: 9/10. Could do a whole moose with two factory knives without getting too dull. Much safer than havalon.

Knock off Jellas bushcraft 8cr Chinese bullshit: 4/10 blade profile sucks and I have to using this turd.

[JeeperCreeper]

Pics or it didn't happen. 

[Brekar]

Got another moose.

Tried out some knives this year when skinning/quartering/butchering.

Using boxing scores:

Havalon: 10/10. Crazy sharp as expected, but also likely to take a finger off

Mora carbon craftline: 9/10. Could do a whole moose with two factory knives without getting too dull. Much safer than havalon.

Knock off Jellas bushcraft 8cr Chinese bullshit: 4/10 blade profile sucks and I have to using this turd.

Man those Havalon's are great. My brother bought 1 last deer season and we ended up using it on 6 different deer. They are crazy sharp, and you're right, they will take pieces out of fingers if you're not paying attention.

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

Just placed my second ever order with Knife Center for a Vosteed Raccoon pocket knife.

I picked up the model with the crossbar lock (basically a Benchmade Axis lock, but with a different name), black micarta scales and a cleaver style (looks more like a sheepsfoot/modified wharnecliffe style to me) blade made of 14C28N steel.

This will be my first Axis lock knife and my second with a 14C28N steel blade. My first with that steel was the B'Yond EDC Slim flipper I picked up when NT2C was down here on his return trip back to Virginia.

ETA: Knife Center sent me an email saying my Vosteed Raccoon shipped today. Might have it in hand before the end of this week or possibly the beginning of next week.

[Rednex]

Ok so I made a thing , been on Ebay sourcing low cost Victorinox swiss army knives. I got 2 for $0.99. So my first "mod" was to take a Waiter but change out the corkscrew to a Phillip's screw driver. So got a waiter and a small tinker both 84mm versions. I ordered a carbide bit kit for my Dremel from Amazon 18 bucks for a 14 pack, and reused the brass pin stock from the tinker to pin the waiter mod. I ground off the key ring part too. I like doing this and it may become my new addiction. I need to get brass pin stock and a source for low cost Alox handle scales. Lord help my wallet.

Bone stock waiter https://www.victorinox.com/us/en/Products/Swiss-Army-Knives/Medium-Pocket-Knives/Waiter/p/0.3303

Now the one I did the mod on.

Closed


Open


Thickness


It's thinner than the standard plastic handle tinker, mine is 1  tool wide, tinker is 2 tools wide. Has the 3 main parts I use daily knife, straight screw driver, and #2 Phillipe's . My next projects include a florists knife with Alox scales, and a kinda Barlow type one.

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

Flytanium makes some titanium scales for some of the Victorinox SAKs. They're not cheap, but they look pretty neat.

If I had the funds and the know-how to do it, I'd see about swapping the scales on my Victorinox Spartan with some titanium scales.

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

Anyone have knife brands that they avoid buying ?

For me that'd be Cold Steel. Not because the knives are bad, but because I have a silly superstition about them.

Basically, I bought a used Cold Steel Vaquero XL from an antique mall (think overpriced flea market with multiple sellers) and a few days later, my dad died.

I know it had nothing to do with me buying the Cold Steel knife, but since then I've avoided buying anything made by them.

Which isn't too hard to do considering new ones are too expensive for me and the quality has slipped a good bit in the last decade or so.

[NT2C]

Anyone have knife brands that they avoid buying ?

For me that'd be Cold Steel. Not because the knives are bad, but because I have a silly superstition about them.

Basically, I bought a used Cold Steel Vaquero XL from an antique mall (think overpriced flea market with multiple sellers) and a few days later, my dad died.

I know it had nothing to do with me buying the Cold Steel knife, but since then I've avoided buying anything made by them.

Which isn't too hard to do considering new ones are too expensive for me and the quality has slipped a good bit in the last decade or so.

Interesting.  A friend of mine just gifted me the Cold Steel Kyoto I he'd been carrying on a neck chain.

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

Anyone have knife brands that they avoid buying ?

For me that'd be Cold Steel. Not because the knives are bad, but because I have a silly superstition about them.

Basically, I bought a used Cold Steel Vaquero XL from an antique mall (think overpriced flea market with multiple sellers) and a few days later, my dad died.

I know it had nothing to do with me buying the Cold Steel knife, but since then I've avoided buying anything made by them.

Which isn't too hard to do considering new ones are too expensive for me and the quality has slipped a good bit in the last decade or so.

Interesting.  A friend of mine just gifted me the Cold Steel Kyoto I he'd been carrying on a neck chain.

Cold Steel makes some decent stuff, I just tend to avoid them because of my superstition about them.

[JeeperCreeper]

Anyone have knife brands that they avoid buying ?

For me that'd be Cold Steel. Not because the knives are bad, but because I have a silly superstition about them.

Basically, I bought a used Cold Steel Vaquero XL from an antique mall (think overpriced flea market with multiple sellers) and a few days later, my dad died.

I know it had nothing to do with me buying the Cold Steel knife, but since then I've avoided buying anything made by them.

Which isn't too hard to do considering new ones are too expensive for me and the quality has slipped a good bit in the last decade or so.

Interesting.  A friend of mine just gifted me the Cold Steel Kyoto I he'd been carrying on a neck chain.

Cold Steel makes some decent stuff, I just tend to avoid them because of my superstition about them.

I actually just got a Cold Steel recon 1 s35vn gfrom a long lost family member for Christmas.

Kind of a pricey gift for someone I didn't know until this year, but I'll def be using it