Emerson CQC15 and CQC8 SouthPaw conversion frame locks

First up is the CQC8 in black and tan G10 as requested by the owner of the folder that begged me to convert this one for him. He wanted it more lefty friendly with a more washed out military look. I think the black and tan G10 did that personally.

Here is the second of the two titled here in this segment. This one is an Emerson CQC15. As mentioned above it and the CQC8 model shown both came to me from left handed folks wanting their right handed factory folders permanently modified to make them both true lefty friendly while at the same time beefing up the frames. This took some doing but in the end I had my way with both folders and they are seeing some hard use now that I like to think they'll handle for a very long time.

Unlike the 8 the CQC 15 was redone for both sides made of slab titanium in .140" thickness titanium. Its a tank with an edge now and ready for serious work!

Doing a lefty conversion is dependent on several areas I must see before I can tell if the knife will allow such a conversion. This is tricky to do on some and impossible to pull off on others. These were both tricky. Most of the difficulty lies in having enough blade metal to play with to change the lock contact angle on the blade to a true left hand function angle so the new lock will work mirror image of what it did from the factory. In some cases as with this 15 model the lock side washer had to be reduced in diameter just a little bit because of the new angle and lock position. It was also necessary to activate a true lock detent ball on both these models. This little ball bearing in the lock is what is responsible for keeping the blade from opening by gravity. Without it the blade point could lift up and protrude out from between the body of the two slab handle sides.