ballisongs is outside my expertise for sure to make. I might be getting access to some cool hardware in winter so I guess its possible, but still the tolerances for production are small to get a good one, and I am too much of a noob to make blades (might also change in winter). The craftsmanship required is one of the reasons its hard to find one to buy below 250-300$. They are also usually illegal to import etc. I have one of shitty quality from a no-name, but I do have a spyderco Baliyo pen which is a lot of fun (its so light though that some stuff is hard to do). info here: http://www.baliyo.com I usually walk around the office flipping that

for quality ones getting one from Bradley or whatever they are called is prolly best. the benchmades are fucking expensive and I think the spyderflys are discontinued?

the whole ban on automatic and balisongs is so stupid, especially for balisongs because they are slower to ready than a regular folder with a thumbstud. I'd argue the same for automatics too, the manual 940 benchmade I have I can open in a fraction of a second, same with assisted opening knives like kershaws, so I dont see why I cant buy a full auto (drool microtech drool) for my collection. :politics:

Agree with most of what you said. I had a few of the cheap chinese makes, but they all fall apart in the end, so I bought myself a Kimura:



It's a good knife with a ton of weight behind it. Not as expensive as a Benchmade, but still solid. Only problem with it is that the pivot screws keep coming undone, even with a ton of blue loctite. Never tried one of the baliyo pens, though I do have a bottlefly for screwing about without getting arrested.

here is a picture of my knife in the wild



requires some assembly before its of any use, and its a one use tool, 9 times out of 10 the damn thing smashes everywhere and cuts your own damn hand though

Pubbie Bazaar living up to its name, gj.

just waiting for Nexus to post his new detroit ghetto blades in the wild


that kimura is pretty, but it does sound like forking for a benchmade is worth it then if you want a high end (only $265 ). Never heard of problems with their pivot screws

Yeah, when I say "keep coming undone" I mean I have to loctite the one pivot screw every other week or so. It's not a big deal, but I can really feel the play increase in the handles over a period of a week. It's a small complaint, and certainly not worth getting worked up over. I do plan on shelling out for a Benchmade model 51 once I get the disposable income for it:



I still plan to keep the Kimura because of the amazing weight behind it, though.

i dont really understand the point of one of those, do you enjoy the thrill of almost cutting your fingers off whenever you use it?

almost all tricks you make sure to keep cutting edge away from your fingers (its only sharp on one side). there are some tricks where you flip it into the air that could be dangerous though.

as for why check out this for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFfEvM58zSg#t=8m33s (make sure you star watching from 8:33). its just fun to flip around.

Part 5 -Sheath basics

Was going to wait until it was all done, but post would be too long and nobody would read it so I will do it in chunks, and it would also stop me from not posting when I ruin everything, speaking of which:

Today I learned that if you have metal shavings near wet leather that shit gets colored black by it instantly

A bit of a repost, but here is my design for the sheath:

The idea is to do a half-way double stitch sort of bucket shape with the belt loop just being an extension that I fold back behind. Its a mix of some nice sheaths I'v seen, so nothing original or anything. Bottom will have a hole drilled for tying it to shit, or around your leg or whatnot.
Missing from picture is a little firesteel holder which I have made, but not sure yet if I want to place it high or low. will be decided next blog post (example: http://www.tardigrade.biz/wp-content/up ... er-web.jpg)

First thing to do is to copy the design outline over to a new sheet of paper, where it gets mirrored. I'll use this as a template for how to cut the leather. Most important here is to mark the welt proper. It is a piece of leather that will be sitting between the folded sides on the sheath and basically stopping the blade from coming in contact with stitching etc. It needs to be fitting pretty close to the blade shape, but not too close or it will make shit rust if it gets wet and get cut up etc.

Here is a pic where I'm in the process of cutting the leather. You can see the template I used at the top and how it matches the initial design (I hope). Leather is thick and bitchy, so use a sharp knife. I rolled my CRKT Spew here because its got a good blade shape for this stuff (eg flat thin edge) and is sharp, but a regular boxcutter works too if you are ghetto.


Next up is to do some prepping for where the sheath will fold backwards. I use a special leather working tool called a groove cutter I think. This particular one is meant for working from edges so needs some ninjaing for this particular task, but it saves me 20$ not having to buy another tool just to make 3 lines. I make 3 cuts along the spine, about half-way down through the leather at the bottom and much less at the top (in hindsight I could have skipped top). This makes folding much easier when we are closing up the sheath and when its folded you can't see the grooves at all:


Speaking of tools, there are a few you do need, like the groove cutter, and some others I will show later, but fuck if I'm buying a custom strap end cutter for god knows how much when I can just use a truck themed shot glass for the same thing, which is to make the belt loop end look n1:


Last bit of cutting is for the welt, I just copy the welt part from the template I made and cut that part out. The side towards the blade is important to get right, the other side its best to extend since I will be trimming it later anyway:

The line on the sheath leather shows where it will go once its time to glue it together.

Thats it for today next up is making the leather wet and working over the edges and then shaping it around the knife (I already started this bit). After that I will do one post on dyeing the sheath (aka morel ruins his kitchen table and floor and clothes, and probably skin too) and then a last one on stitching and final treatment/pictures.

Really hate people that actually bottle people