Got this from a customer of mine. I really thought the clip I made for his Kershaw folding knife (JYDII) and the mini Titanium Pry bar I made up for him and wrapped in khaki camo cord turned out well but when he combined it with this Roswell, NM background pic (he lives there) I thought it all worked well together and was worth sharing.

Thanks J.T. Great pic man!

STR

He Man Folder in Leather and 12C27 Blade Steel

I was playing around in the shop some today and yesterday finishing up one of my custom folders I build. Call it a proto-type if you like, at least regarding the leather overscale but I think it turned out pretty classy. I'm still trying to clean up around the edges of the leather some because I'm not familiar with what works or how to properly trim it yet but I'm working on it. Its still a bit wet yet but starting to dry now finally.

As some of you know I've occasionally used some textured G10 or CF to make a small overscale for some grippiness on the handle of my He Man folder model. What I did with this one was slightly different which is what I wanted. I took a scrap piece of tanned bull hide out and cut that to the shape I wanted for this folder. This piece of leather is one that is approximately .080 thickness plus or minus. I soaked it some under the faucet to get it wet on both sides. Not sopping wet or anything but just wet and then I put it in a plastic bag overnight. Today I got it out of the plastic for a bit until it was just starting to get that dry look again on top where I could see the lighter color starting to show again and then I used one of the textured titanium slabs Dave at Great Lakes Waterjet had done for me a while back (what he refers to as his "Tac Ti", which is wonderful stuff if you don't have any) and pressed it into the leather nice and evenly all over using my half ton arbor press. The result was surprising and it came out pretty frickin' great I must say! This gave the leather some nice texturing for a slightly better thumb purchase when reaching to extract the folder from my pocket and in my opinion it really added something to the folder. I hope the pics do it justice.

Currently I'm letting it dry some before I use it and the jury is still out on how well it will hold up but based on the fact that I have holsters and saddles with texturing of some kind and some other tooling done to them I suspect its going to be something that works out pretty good.

Anyway, thanks for looking. Oh yeah. Blade steel on this puppy is 12C27 which I had Brad at Peters Heat treat bring up to 60 Rockwell. This steel is surprising me at how clean it comes back from Peters and also its holding a great edge for quite a while and has proven to be quite nice. This folder weighs in at 3.4 ounces and is 4.25" closed with a 3.125" blade length. As you can see I made this one with a Wharncliffe blade shape. (my fave!)

STR

Umnumzaan Anodized blue and gold

Shown here is a Chris Reeve Umnumzaan folder which is the newest model Chris offers. Its the first one I've seen and due to the job request here I was able to see it all because I had to take it apart to do the blue and gold anodizing.

This looks pretty good and I hope the owner likes it. Its his color request. Took me three tries to get it to the color brightness I wanted but I managed. Third tries a charm as they say.

Thanks for looking.

STR

CQC14 Pop on Frame Lock installed

Please note that this job shown here known as a frame lock conversion along with some others I used to offer are no longer being done by me. I will not be offering this service for production models or the services of rebuilding lock back style folders like some of the Spydercos shown here and this is something that I just decided not too long ago. The reasons for this are too lengthy to get into here. I leave what is shown here in these posts in my blog for your viewing pleasure only. At this time I am trying to focus more on my custom folders which I make from scratch. I will continue to offer my custom folders and my custom titanium pocket clips and pry bars as well but I have limited the numbers of these I will do at one time also. If you wish to know more about why, or what other jobs just write me or post a question in a comment. Thanks for understanding.

My first post for 2010 is shown here and it is one of the pop on frame lock sides in .160 thickness 6AL-4V titanium I did for folks a while back. This is left over from last year. This was made for the Emerson CQC14 model without even having the knife shown here in the picture here to use but simply by doing all the same prep work as if I did have the knife here and then shipping the frame out to the owner of the knife to install himself.

The holes are all mated up to match up perfectly to the original factory side so all the user has to do is open this lock, disassemble their folder and reassemble it using the new thicker slab instead of the original factory thin liner lock and G10 scale.

Some of the models have been tricky to do this with but the 14 and the Horseman have both proven to be quite consistently identical from Emerson so I have had success with several now doing them this way for folks. The owner of the knife then installed the lock side and new replacement non rattle stop pin and took these pictures.

Oh and by the way. I appreciate the great pictures. They always look so much better when someone else takes the pictures so I can post them here.

Thanks

STR