Practicing Skills: Making Custom Wooden Handles for a beaten up Victorinox

Heeeyho Readers! How about giving new life to an old pocket knife?

We are so used to buying things that some skills fade away from generation to generation. I'm specifically talking about fixing stuff, carving wood, making parts, modifying, creating tools to tackle a problem. Being creative as a whole. The other day I discovered an old Ford owner's manual with a whole section teaching how to adjust valves {shock} — not that we'd do that on a modern car, but you get the idea. Learning new skills is one hell of a great (good) drug, and so, I decided to try something different.

The journey starts with a small square of some incredibly dense and dark wood. Beautiful piece, I must say. The scent is punchy like quality coffee. Dad says he cut the piece off an old railway sleeper, so figure how durable it must be.

Instead of throwing it away like other scraps, I decided to try wood carving to mod a beaten-up Victorinox Classic SD. Dad used to have this 58mm pocket-knife as his keychain. Obviously, a bad idea. The years of bashing his keys around kinda destroyed the scales (side handles). New scales are available, though not as fun as making custom ones. Slightly insecure of the task and provided of really basic tools — most of our woodworking stuff are in dad's ranch —, I scratched my brain.

The way to tackle the project is to start slowly and with tasks I know how to handle — wood carving not being one. The old red scales are the first to go; they pop out nicely and easy. Underneath, signs of use are evident: poor little knife is dirty and presents dents near the edges. Fortunately, that's easy to fix.

A flat file fixes the dents without trouble. Little knife starts to look fresh again after deep cleaning with a brush and soap. Afterwards I got way too excited to start with the woodwork that the beginning is unrecorded. I roughly cut two rectangular blocks of wood, more or less the scales size, then brought them down to thickness after a long time of ultra-boring sanding. Lastly, marked with a pen the dimensions to shape the piece.

See the "base" piece of wood on the above photo and the beginning of the first scale in my hand. Countless tools would make life a lot easier: e.g. band saw, belt sander, cnc laser cutter, and the sky is the limit. Still, I think doing everything by hand represents the true art. With the two sides near the final dimension, I used a drill bit to make the holes for the rivets (spun the drill bit manually on my finger tips to avoid punching through the thin piece of wood.)

With the rivets aligning the scales it's safer to give the edges their final shape. Sanding and checking is the motto.

Becoming more patient is among the few good things of growing older, at least in my case. As a kid I always wanted to see the projects done asap, which often resulted in failure. Woodworking doesn't reward the impatient. Approaching the job as some kind of therapy kept anxiety in check. And so, I progressed slowly, leaving steps for the next day on purpose as an exercise for the mind.

Because this wood is so dense, shaping the pieces by hand is quite enjoyable. A little sanding here, a touch with the file there. It doesn't take a lot of brute force to remove material; to the opposite, it's incredibly subtle.

Starting with 80 grit sandpaper, I move to 120, then to 400. The edges are now matching the 'chassis'. The scales start to look like scales, though feel thicker than the originals. Can work on that a tiny more.

Onto the scary part...

Making the radius on the edges definitely scares the living shit out of me. Messing up here means trashing the entire job. I want the radius to be uniform all around, which requires sharp eyes (that I don't have). The only way to discover is to move in teeny steps while checking and moving to finer sandpapers. As if making one isn't scary enough, there's the other side {goddammit}. I clench the butt cheeks and keep on sanding.

The struggle here is knowing when to stop. One day I heard that perfect is the enemy of good enough. It's kinda true if you think about it... overdoing can ruin pretty much everything. One final touch using the absurdly thin 1200 grit sandpaper finishes the job. Perfecto, done, finito, c'est fini.

Time to assemble

Before all I tried different finishes: matte clearcoat and high gloss, both brushing and spray. None satisfied me. For the sake of testing, I ended up scrubbing olive oil. Spot on! I've used olive oil to hydrate Brazilian rosewood on guitar fret-boards before, so the idea wasn't a total blind shot.

I'm yet to figure a way to add the classic Swiss Army cross to these wooden scales. The original logo — that's a separate piece btw — is long gone. Perhaps a little brass-made cross would look fantastic against the dark wood.

The final result is fantastic in my humble opinion. Considering it's the first time ever I try to carve something so small and delicate... well... I'll leave up to the readers to judge.

I'm glad to have this old Victorinox Classic SD back into the collection in such a special and unique way.

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~Love ya all,

Disclaimer: The author of this post is a convict broke backpacker, who has travelled more than 10.000 km hitchhiking and more than 5.000 km cycling. Following him may cause severe problems of wanderlust and inquietud. You've been warned.