My Latest Knives.

can't beat antler for a knife handle

 

Very nice, Keith. Do they hold an edge? I really like the Hunter.

 

You can turn a so-so pocket knife into something useful and of value.

I was scavenging in some pawn shop and happened on a Muela folding knife with locking mechanism (Muela is a Spanish knife-making company). The store owner didn't know what he had and the knife hadn't been taken care of, so I got a super low price of $15 (U.S.). The owner/employee was being a nice guy, so I'm gonna be a return customer.

I cleaned the knife and slicked-up its folding mechanism with a metal polish -- wish I could have done more to slick that action, but corrosion was in exactly the wrong place. So, how to make this open even easier yet?

Got online to see if one could buy after-market blade thumb studs. Poof, found the Kwik Thumb Stud and bought a couple; one I will use in future, used one on the Muela, and will be ordering more in the future. My work and that thumb stud turned a $15 knife into something I could sell for $40 or more (retail price on this knife I found to be $95). I'm not selling -- man, this is one neat knife, holds an edge, the brass stud is the same color and the knife's brass, and I wove a little lanyard for this knife, beautiful. Others can do just what I did, resurrect perfectly good pocket knives.

The set-screw on the thumb stud is on there and FIRMLY so. The tip of the set screw (Allen wrench type) screwed down to the blade then fortuitously on down into the thumbnail slot -- it isn't going anywhere, but I sure am keeping the Allen wrench sent with the thumb stud. What a delight to be able to buy a pocket knife thumb stud with this sort of quality! Am I now going to become some resurrector of pocket knives? Hey, maybe so.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Kwik+thumb+stud+&atb=v140-1&ia=products

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Kwik+Thumb+Stud&i=sporting&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

The following photograph looks almost exactly like the used knife I just purchased (whoever had owned it before me sure had NOT taken care of this knife; after I got done, it now looks beautiful and has a good almost dangerous edge on it; the knife-point IS dangerous). One big difference between this photo and my knife is that the thumbnail slot on my knife's blade is FAR closer to the knife's hinge so that when I screwed down the thumb-stud, it's set screw actually got down into that slot. I believe that this will help prevent the set-screw from loosening. I'd say that the thumb-stud is 1/2 inch away from the hinge. I can now open the knife with one hand, which is super convenient. Overall blade length is 3.25 inch. If using the knife to stab, I don't think that the thumb-stud would stop the blade from going its full length into the meat.