Restored a US Navy Mk 1 by Camillus

Thought I'd share a recent refurbishment I did for a dealer in town. He handed me a blade with crosspiece and a very poor handle. It was very loose and incomplete and instead of the birdshead pommel and screw it had a nut welded to the tang and a plastic knob forced on. I stripped it completely and had to grind the nut away leaving a short square tang stub to attach the new pommel to. Here's pics and I'll take you through. The basic blade before. I didn't take pics of it when I first brought it home, should have...

Next is to cut squares of latigo and cut center holes. Make them big enough to shape after, glue them together and select a piece of steel to make a pommel from. Scribe it out and drill center hole. Cut off and grind it round. Nothing to it...

Fit the pommel to the handle, that way you know how long to make the leather. Time to shape the handle, use a sander and do it outside. The leather dust is staggering...and hanges in the air. Use a center mandrell for your leather and it could break when you are sanding. Thought maybe I was done at this point so I left it overnight...and decided it wasn't even close yet. Needed much more removed from it's girth. I've seen too many that look like a fat leather sausage after.

Final shaping and peen the tang to retain the pommel. I thought about cross pinning but that was a long reach for a small drill. I know some will recognize this one should have an aluminum birdshead with screw but welding a threaded rod on wasn't happening... Final shaping and used Watco medium walnut stain to give it final look... Didn't try to hide it's age or blue it. You can't hide the pits, the tang was very hard for flaring, I suspect from the weld that was done there. Handle ended up nice and tight and the pommel was very secure. Seems satisfactory...

Very nice job Jim.:thup:

Dumb questions:
I have a a Camillus and two Ka-Bars that I want to re-do the handles on. I've read that you need to make a compression fixture to compress the leather disks before putting the pommel back on. (??)
My Camillus has a pin in the pommel, but the two Ka-Bars look like they were spot welded. From your experience, it looks like I can I peen them instead. I don't have a welder and even if I did, its been waaaay too many years since I last ran a bead...

The leather I used was glued and compressed by hand. I used white carpenter's glue. If you can compress it you will have it smaller than when you measured it. All I did was glue and slide them together on the tang until they dried. This isn't my first...

You have the option of buying a kit to redo your knives, discs and pommel and pin I think. You don't have to grind like I did. The cross pin you speak of needs to be may need drilled out and might be blind at one end, if you can only find one end. Careful doing that one. The ones that look welded are peened, and possible threaded on before peening. They didn't start as welded though, hard to say without pics what you have now.

KA-BAR: Handle Component Kit for Traditional KA-BAR

Excellent!!

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Originally Posted by frankderrico

Excellent!!

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Would have to agree.
That leather dust is worse than belt sanding MDF board. Dust hangs there like a foggy morning. Finish on the leather tops it off.

A+

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Originally Posted by painter777

That leather dust

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I tried a few seconds to "Have a look" and see what was happening and decided I had to move outside. Then I could just blow the dust off after and leave it in the grass.