How To Make A SlipJoint Pocketknife

Now that we have the mechanical workings of the knife finished, it’s time to turn our attention to making the sides. First decide how long the bolsters should be and draw them off on the liner. Color enough of the 1/8 inch Nickel Silver with the magic marker to allow you to scribe out four bolsters. Cut the bolsters out with a band saw or a hacksaw. Be sure to leave a little extra room around the scribed line. Don’t worry about rounding them off at this point.

We now want to grind the inside ends of the bolsters flat so they will fit well against the bone scales when we put the knife together. Start off my making sure that the disk grinder’s support table is square with the disk. Adjust the table if needed. Grind just enough from the inside edges of the bolsters to make them flat and smooth. Set these aside for now.

Take the shin bone and slice off enough from one side to make the two scales. The scales should be a little longer than the distance between the bolster lines drawn on the liner, and a little wider than the liner. The thickness is not important at this point as long as it’s at least 1/8 inch thick.

Fold a piece of tape over so that it makes a tab, and stick it to one of the pieces of the bone. Grind the bone to the correct size against the grinder’s flat platen. Hold on to the tab of tape like a handle.

Use the disk grinder to make the ends of the bone flat so they will fit well against the bolsters. Also clean the sides of the bone up on the disk.

Now it’s time to solder the bolsters onto the liner. I use silver solder with a liquid flux. You should be able to get it at your local hardware store. Clamp up a pair of vice grips into your vice as seen in the first picture. Clamp a bolster to one end of a liner and put a drop of flux in the corner. Heat the flux from the underside until it starts to bubble. Then put a small piece of solder in the corner and heat it form the underside as seen in the second picture. The solder will start flowing as soon as it heats up. Keep heating the underside of the liner until the heat pulls the flowing solder down around the bolster. Take a flux brush and brush the excess solder out of the corner.

Check the solder joint to make sure that the solder goes all the way around the end of the liner. Add more solder to the joint if needed. Take a small triangle file and clean up the solder in the corner of the bolster and liner. You don’t have to worry about cleaning up the solder around the bolster at this time. Once you have the corner cleaned up, lay the bone piece against the bolster to make sure it fits. File more solder away from the corner if needed.

Clamp the liner and the second bolster up in the vice grips. Place the bone piece between the two bolsters and adjust the liner until the bone fits good and tight. Remove the bone and solder the second bolster. Clean up the solder joint with a small triangle file until the bone fits nicely between the bolsters. Place the two liners back to back and put a pin though the center hole. You want to make sure that the bolsters on each side of the knife line up. Hold a bolster in place and mark the second liner with a pencil. Clamp the second liner and bolster in the vice and solder them in place. Follow the same steps that were outlined earlier for soldering and cleaning up the bolsters.