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Fight'N Rooster Project : Broken Blade fix

Sorry I haven't been on as much the past week or two- been very busy at work. I did squeeze in 4 hours this afternoon to work on a project Fight'N Rooster whittler I picked up at a gun/knife show last weekend for $15. It had all-around wear commensurate for a 30-40 year old knife but the thing really hurting it was a missing secondary blade (I hope it was a sheeps foot blade because that's what I carved out of a piece of 1/16" 1095 carbon steel to replace it with.)

1/16" was quite a bit thicker than the rather petite blade that came off of this, so I had to do a lot of grinding. Since I do not own a belt grinder I have to do the heavy grinding with a jewelry "mizzy" wheel using a Foredom motor and hand piece. Hence the 4-hours I mentioned earlier, as it takes an hour to do what could be done in a couple of minutes with a belt grinder.

Above are pictures before, during, and after the procedure. I left a bit of extra length and width (and even thickness) on the blade because it has not been sharpened yet and I wanted to leave plenty of metal to sharpen off. Still, everything looks good (a welding seam can be seen if one looks closely- I used jewelry saw blades as filler material which may have resulted in a visible weld joint - will be trying a steel wire on my next blade weld project which may be a bit less visible) and the weld is very strong. As mentioned before, this type of repair is great for display purposes or even some light use, probably not so great for somebody wanting a tempered blade to hold an edge. I will say the weld joint itself appears to be quite strong, so this is not some fragile fix by any means. It is perfect for somebody wanting to retain his original tang stamp (which this Fighting rooster had no fewer than 4 !!) and does not require disassembly of the knife.

One thing is certain: A new blade looks much better than a jagged metallic stump....

Over the next week or two I am going to attempt to re-scale and rehab a 50-60?-year old CAMCO scout knife - going to replace the original scales made of plastic (designed to look like jigged bone) with actual jigged bone handles. This knife isn't worth a lot, but there were a ton of things going on with it that I hope to hone my restoration skills on. We'll see....At some point will also be attempting to replace half a "gone" blade on an Uncle Henry, although I believe this is some type of stainless so I'm not sure how that'll work out...stay tuned.

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Replies to This Discussion

KnifeMakerPermalink Reply by Andy Larrison on April 2, 2017 at 0:03

Nice lookin transplant.

Permalink Reply by Ron Cooper on April 2, 2017 at 3:34

Color me very impressed!

But, hey! I'm a guy who has trouble putting the cap back on a tube of toothpaste after I'm done using it. So tackling a project of this magnitude would definitely be waaay above my paygrade. As would the vast majority of tasks that you seemingly accomplish with relative ease.

If he were still alive, I'm sure that Frank Buster would slap you on the back and tell you that you'd done one heck of a job in resurrecting that wounded Rooster and making him whole again!

Good show, mate!

Permalink Reply by J.J. Smith III on April 2, 2017 at 10:55

Great job, Andy.

Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on April 2, 2017 at 20:07

Great work of giving this knife a new life!

Permalink Reply by Jan Carter on April 2, 2017 at 20:19

Great work of giving this knife a new life!

Permalink Reply by Andy Jordan on April 2, 2017 at 21:23

Thanks for the kind words Gentlemen - Please stay tuned for more projects as I churn them out. As stated, I'm about to embark upon scale replacement (and a general rebuild) for an old CAMCO camp knife...please wish me luck....CAMCO was made by Camillus to my understanding, a more affordable line, probably with less attention paid to fit and finish detail, but I will say that outside of the original plastic (nylon?) handles being shriveled up almost to nothing, the other components of this knife are pretty sturdy despite being a rusty, somewhat bent-up example. These aren't worth a lot. A nice one will bring $40-50 on eBay and they originally sold for just a couple of bucks in hardware stores, but to me it's more about the process of doing it so I'm not using a higher-valued collector piece as a guinea pig if and when somebody trusts it to me..

Permalink Reply by Andy Jordan on April 3, 2017 at 19:20

And a great big gigantic apology to Jan- just read HER profile and realized she was a lady. I've been saying things like "thanks gentlemen" in response to some of the comments on my posts, I guess because I was thinking along the lines of the actor Jan-Michael Vincent, and in Europe many folks by that name are men,even though most Jans I know here in the USA are ladies....again, my sincere apologies!

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