How To Make A SlipJoint Pocketknife

We now have our bolsters soldered to our liners. Grind the bolsters down to match the liner. Be sure to dip the liner and bolsters in water often to keep the heat down while grinding. It’s very easy to overheat the bolsters and melt the solder. If this happens the bolsters will fall off, and you will have to go back and solder them again. Keep this in mind any time you are shaping or smoothing the bolsters. Flat sand the back of the liners and the top of the bolsters to remove any burs.

Turn one of the liners upside down and drill through each of the bolsters. Use the previously drilled hole in the liner as a guide. Put the knife together with pins to see how the holes line up. If you have trouble getting one of the pins through, take the assembled knife to the drill press and drill through the hole. This shaves off any edges that are keeping the pin from going completely through.

It’s kind of hard to see what’s going on in these next two photos. We need to drill through the backside of the liners and into the bone scales. This becomes difficult if the bone scales are thicker than the bolsters. If you don’t drill the holes vertical, then the pins will not go through. Place one of the bone scales between the bolsters of a liner. Use the disk grinder to bring the surface of the bone down to the height of the bolsters as seen in the first photo. Now the bolsters and bone will line up when placed upside down on the drill press as seen in the second photo. Drill a hole in the bone through the center hole of the liner.

I use super glue gel and 1/16 inch pins to hold the bone scales onto the liners. Center punch a small indention on each side of the bone. Be careful not to hit the center punch too hard or you may do damage to the scales. Try to make the mark an equal distance from the top to bottom to outside edge. Pin the bone and liner to a board with the center pin. Drill the first 1/16 inch hole and place a pin in it. Then drill the second hole. Placing pins through the holes as you drill them will keep everything lined up.

Put the knife together and see how it looks. Now grind the excess material from the bolsters and bone until you get to the liner. Try to be aware of the bolsters heating up. Take the blade out so you can grind the ends down to match.

The knife looks pretty good at this point, but we need to grind the bolsters down and round them off. Take the knife apart and grind the bolsters by holding the liner. I use the flat platen to grid the bolster to their basic rounded shape. I then hold the liner and rock the bolster back and forth against a slack belt to round off the edges.

This is another picture in which it’s hard to see what’s going on. Now that we have the bolsters rounded, we need to round the bone scales to match. Place pins in the bone and liner, and grind the bone by rocking the liner back and fourth. You will have to move the pins around to get to all of the bone. Try to keep two pins in the liner at all times to keep the bone in place. Be careful not to get it too hot.

Take a Dremel tool and jig up the bone. It looks best if there is not pattern and it’s just randomly jigged. I usually start at one end and work my way down. Then I go back and randomly hit different places until I’m pleased with the way it looks.