Hey guys 
new to the forum, but not new to knives
all started more than a decade ago with bushcraft and frequent trips to nature. And as you all know, Your knife is your life... knives became an obsession fast after seeing a Fallkniven A1 destruction video. Since then I bought several knives and knife blades to which I made a custom handle.
Some time ago I wandered the web and got to the Benchmade 200 Puukko mainly because of the blade material CPM 3V. I also seen the video of stripping the blade clean of the rubber handle and it got me thinking. Perfectly small blade made out of a perfect material with a mediocre factory edge and a shitty sheath What if you would change the bad things to great like doing a full scandi with a very high mirror convex, saw off the unneeded length of the handle and make a custom wooden handle with a nice 100% leather sheath?
When I opened the box that the knife came in I was pleasantly surprised by the weight as it is quite a light knife. The sheath was really terrible but this I knew in advance thanks to all the reviews out there. Comrade Dyatlov would say "Not great, not terrible." to the handle as its a decent semi hard rubber with a nice grip, that isn't that comfy once u start gripping tight.
I still had a piece of stabilized spalted beech cut in 2 pieces from a larger material order.
Stripped the blade after 15 min, cause I knew what I was aiming for Mora Classic did it in one smooth move and behold the naked CPM 3V steel blade.
After that I flattened the wooden pieces, drilled holes and glued it all together with epoxy and steel bolts and left it in the rack overnight.
This morning a lot of dirty work awaited me, but I couldn't wait for the finished thing
I am hobby knife enthusiast, so most of my tools are manual thus its a long hard job to carve a desired shape out of a "stone" in this case hardwood filled with hard epoxy resin. Few hours later...
I also sanded the factory edge into a scandivex that has a high profile. Planing to push it further to mirror polish, but that is a story for another time Everyone who has ever carved a thing out of wood knows the pleasure of the next step, when you let the wood come alive by rubbing wax or oil onto the surface and let the grain structure pop out
As you can see, I have shortened the handle by a bit, cause I found it to be way too long for my taste and for the purpose of this to be a small "big" knife. The length and shape comparison to some of my knives (that you might know).
Then the only thing that was left to do was to customize a leather sheath made by K.M.Saddlery (CZ) that I was using for several knives due to its nice "medium fit".
All n all some work still needs to be done, but after sharpening and diamond paste stropping, short test amazed me, but that will be a topic of a different thread hopefully.
Hope you like it and hope you let me know what you think
Have a nice blade day
new to the forum, but not new to knives
all started more than a decade ago with bushcraft and frequent trips to nature. And as you all know, Your knife is your life... knives became an obsession fast after seeing a Fallkniven A1 destruction video. Since then I bought several knives and knife blades to which I made a custom handle.Some time ago I wandered the web and got to the Benchmade 200 Puukko mainly because of the blade material CPM 3V. I also seen the video of stripping the blade clean of the rubber handle and it got me thinking. Perfectly small blade made out of a perfect material with a mediocre factory edge and a shitty sheath
What if you would change the bad things to great like doing a full scandi with a very high mirror convex, saw off the unneeded length of the handle and make a custom wooden handle with a nice 100% leather sheath?When I opened the box that the knife came in I was pleasantly surprised by the weight as it is quite a light knife. The sheath was really terrible but this I knew in advance thanks to all the reviews out there. Comrade Dyatlov would say "Not great, not terrible." to the handle as its a decent semi hard rubber with a nice grip, that isn't that comfy once u start gripping tight.
I still had a piece of stabilized spalted beech cut in 2 pieces from a larger material order.
Stripped the blade after 15 min, cause I knew what I was aiming for
Mora Classic did it in one smooth move and behold the naked CPM 3V steel blade.
After that I flattened the wooden pieces, drilled holes and glued it all together with epoxy and steel bolts and left it in the rack overnight.
This morning a lot of dirty work awaited me, but I couldn't wait for the finished thing
I am hobby knife enthusiast, so most of my tools are manual thus its a long hard job to carve a desired shape out of a "stone" in this case hardwood filled with hard epoxy resin. Few hours later...
I also sanded the factory edge into a scandivex that has a high profile. Planing to push it further to mirror polish, but that is a story for another time
Everyone who has ever carved a thing out of wood knows the pleasure of the next step, when you let the wood come alive by rubbing wax or oil onto the surface and let the grain structure pop out
As you can see, I have shortened the handle by a bit, cause I found it to be way too long for my taste and for the purpose of this to be a small "big" knife. The length and shape comparison to some of my knives (that you might know).
Then the only thing that was left to do was to customize a leather sheath made by K.M.Saddlery (CZ) that I was using for several knives due to its nice "medium fit".
All n all some work still needs to be done, but after sharpening and diamond paste stropping, short test amazed me, but that will be a topic of a different thread hopefully.
Hope you like it and hope you let me know what you think
Have a nice blade day
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