draggat
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2010
- Messages
- 2,669
Hi all, I just wanted to share some pictures of scales that I made for a few of my production knives. Recently I had some money to buy another knife, but instead I decided to buy some wood and pimp some of the ones I have (with varying degrees of success
)
Lone Wolf knives are really underrated, in my opinion. Now that Benchmade acquired them, they totally cheapened them, much to my chagrin. I'm on the lookout for another Longhorn and Blackfoot (Pre Benchmade and plain edge only). If you have one that you want to get rid of, let me know! I thought these would be easy to make scales for. I was right and wrong.... The insides required quite a bit of milling, especially the Diablo. The Diablo shown here is a manual version, but it is almost identical to the double action version. The only difference is a missing backspring, sear, a couple of screws.... Unfortunately it can't be turned into an auto because the stop pin extends into the scale that slides on the D/A version and the tang of the blade has extra material that would need to be removed.
I don't really have any knowledge of woodworking and most of the equipment I used was borrowed. Here's my results!
Lone Wolf Blackfoot in layered black/gray G10. My first attempt. Not perfect, but not half bad either. G10 is a great starter material because it's super cheap and easy to cut. Not very pretty IMHO.
My next attempt was a Lone Wolf Vallotton and a Lone Wolf Longhorn in Cocobolo. The wood is fairly easy to work with and it's cheap so if you screw up, no harm done. Not very attractive though. It's pretty wild to see the oil bubble out while cutting it with a dremel!
After I'd finished the Longhorn, I got cocky and decided to get some prettier wood. The next attempt was the Benchmade Mini Dejavoo in desert ironwood. It didn't turn out so well. In addition to drilling the pivot countersink wrong, a corner chipped off and I was unable to clamp it while it dried so there's a line where it cracked. Then I found some really bad hairline cracks..... Win some, lose some.
Rather than give up, I continued with the H&K 14210 in desert ironwood. I'm pretty happy with this one. No major issues other than the figure of the wood could be a little nicer. The axis lock presented new problems because of the precise milling that was necessary on the backside, but somehow it worked out.
At this point, I decided to redo the Blackfoot. I EDC it quite a bit and the G10 was pretty ugly in comparison to these new exotic woods. Here it is in box elder burl, stabilized and dyed green.
Hot on the heels of my previous two successful builds, I decided to do my Benchmade Mini Onslaught in redwood burl, stabilized and dyed grey. This thing was incredibly difficult for me. One of the scales moved a little while I was drilling the holes so I had to adjust them a little. also, a piece cracked off right by the axis lock. Fortunately, I was able to clamp it well using regular gorilla glue. It seems to be fine... I did a ton of sanding on it afterwards and even I can barely see where it broke. Not perfect, but perfectly usable. I have the carbon fiber version of this knife too, and it's amazing how different they feel in hand. This redwood burl has a kind of metallic iridescent quality to it which is really hard to capture on camera.
I already screwed up... Just hadn't realized it yet! LOL!!
Here's where it broke.
The next knife that I was originally going to do was an H&K 14205, but after all of the problems on the Mini Onslaught, I decided to shelve that knife and use the wood for a Lone Wolf Diablo. This one turned out really neat. It's the same stabilized redwood burl that at I used on the Mini Onslaught, but for whatever reason, it has much better contrast on the knife.
)Lone Wolf knives are really underrated, in my opinion. Now that Benchmade acquired them, they totally cheapened them, much to my chagrin. I'm on the lookout for another Longhorn and Blackfoot (Pre Benchmade and plain edge only). If you have one that you want to get rid of, let me know! I thought these would be easy to make scales for. I was right and wrong.... The insides required quite a bit of milling, especially the Diablo. The Diablo shown here is a manual version, but it is almost identical to the double action version. The only difference is a missing backspring, sear, a couple of screws.... Unfortunately it can't be turned into an auto because the stop pin extends into the scale that slides on the D/A version and the tang of the blade has extra material that would need to be removed.
I don't really have any knowledge of woodworking and most of the equipment I used was borrowed. Here's my results!
Lone Wolf Blackfoot in layered black/gray G10. My first attempt. Not perfect, but not half bad either. G10 is a great starter material because it's super cheap and easy to cut. Not very pretty IMHO.
My next attempt was a Lone Wolf Vallotton and a Lone Wolf Longhorn in Cocobolo. The wood is fairly easy to work with and it's cheap so if you screw up, no harm done. Not very attractive though. It's pretty wild to see the oil bubble out while cutting it with a dremel!
After I'd finished the Longhorn, I got cocky and decided to get some prettier wood. The next attempt was the Benchmade Mini Dejavoo in desert ironwood. It didn't turn out so well. In addition to drilling the pivot countersink wrong, a corner chipped off and I was unable to clamp it while it dried so there's a line where it cracked. Then I found some really bad hairline cracks..... Win some, lose some.
Rather than give up, I continued with the H&K 14210 in desert ironwood. I'm pretty happy with this one. No major issues other than the figure of the wood could be a little nicer. The axis lock presented new problems because of the precise milling that was necessary on the backside, but somehow it worked out.
At this point, I decided to redo the Blackfoot. I EDC it quite a bit and the G10 was pretty ugly in comparison to these new exotic woods. Here it is in box elder burl, stabilized and dyed green.
Hot on the heels of my previous two successful builds, I decided to do my Benchmade Mini Onslaught in redwood burl, stabilized and dyed grey. This thing was incredibly difficult for me. One of the scales moved a little while I was drilling the holes so I had to adjust them a little. also, a piece cracked off right by the axis lock. Fortunately, I was able to clamp it well using regular gorilla glue. It seems to be fine... I did a ton of sanding on it afterwards and even I can barely see where it broke. Not perfect, but perfectly usable. I have the carbon fiber version of this knife too, and it's amazing how different they feel in hand. This redwood burl has a kind of metallic iridescent quality to it which is really hard to capture on camera.
I already screwed up... Just hadn't realized it yet! LOL!!
Here's where it broke.
The next knife that I was originally going to do was an H&K 14205, but after all of the problems on the Mini Onslaught, I decided to shelve that knife and use the wood for a Lone Wolf Diablo. This one turned out really neat. It's the same stabilized redwood burl that at I used on the Mini Onslaught, but for whatever reason, it has much better contrast on the knife.
