Duke (username: knifemaker44) and I are of a like mind in many things, for example, the slender and sinister look of the vintage, narrow knives. We like sturdy rocker mechanisms, exposed or concealed. While we can build safeties, typically we don't. Also, Duke kids that he has 'sausage fingers' so we're probably staying at the high side of 11" and not dealing with mini's. On my side of the equation are dozens of knives, all extant only in my CAD files, and shared with only a few close friends, if at all. Duke brings his experience of nearly three decades of fixed blade building to his new love of switchblades. To reduce the confusion between us, we've given each design a nickname. As the knives are built, we will show the designs. It's my intention to offer the designs freely to anyone who wants to tackle them. On Duke's side, advice and responses to building questions are also free. If you want to go the route of commissioning something from DoubleD, ask. But do please realize that's not our first consideration; we aren't trying to feed our families from this. We are simply doing what we love to do. Duke doesn't need a another customer, per se, because he is building for me.
The knife arrived on a cloudy Saturday, and I had to resort to artificial lighting. I apologize for the picture quality; I'll have to reshoot when the weather is more cooperative. It weights 10.8 oz. or 307 g. The overall length, as appropriate, is 14-1/8" (35,9 cm) with 6-7/16" (16,4 cm) of blade, and exactly 5/8" (15,8 mm) at the ricasso. The blade, springs, and rockers are made from 5/32" (4 mm) 1095 steel. The bolsters are 416 stainless and the liners are .06" (1,5 mm) 410 stainless. It uses a 5/32" steel pivot, while all other pins are 3/32" (2,4 mm) NS. The scales are stabilized giraffe bone.
As you can see, it's an exposed mechanism lockback with stepped bolsters. Duke added copper washers for speed and it does well for such a big knife. The sound it makes is a subtle double click on opening and a sharp double on closing. Duke and I are of the opinion that much of what makes a swinger sound so unique is inherent in the lockback mechanism rather than the swinging guards.
The giraffe bone has great character and polishes beautifully.
If I wasn't already enamored with stabilized giraffe, I am sure it would grow on me. I love the black patches that appear at random and which Duke has nicely bookmatched on both edges.
The earless bolsters and the lockback really make this a sleek knife.
This is a logo you will be seeing more of.
If you have no interest in how Il Punto was built, you can skip the rest of this post. Otherwise, we're going to look over Duke's shoulder and mine to see the progress.
This is approximately how the knife looks in CAD. It's only approximate because the program scales the work to fit my screen (and thus distorts it a bit). I can only effectively communicate the design if you have my CAD program or something else that will read a DXF, or if I print full sized templates (no distortion), or if I take a screenshot (like these, edited a bit for clarity, and slightly compressed vertically.)
Duke created this set of parts from laminated templates I provided, and then began the tedious process of fitting and tempering them. He and I agree that picklocks are tricky to build and suspect that the twist in the spine to rotate the locktab weakens the grain of the steel. For now, we're mostly building lockback. Aesthetically, we think this is in keeping with that "lean and hungry look". Cassius would have loved to have access to such a knife.
We've been playing with rockers and trunions for a while and Duke came up with this great approach for machining a fulcrum out of a piece of brass round stock. Note that the arm between sear and pivot is slightly longer than the one between pivot and button. There's plenty of sear engagement, so the knife has a solid lock closed, but when it fires, it does so with less than 5° of rotation. This trigger is fast and crisp, but it has no free travel. We are building display pieces, after all.
This is Duke's set-up for fitting everything and checking function. Once he had the locking shoulder fitted and everything rotating and compressing correctly, he tempered the springs.
There's a old rule of thumb that says, "Measure twice, cut once." Since this was such a needle-like profile, Duke did multiple practice runs, even cutting one out of mild steel and fitting a wooden handle. He is nothing, if not meticulous.
Duke was in the process of improving his tooling and refining his technique with narrow blades. When he was ready, the did the finished grind on the actual blade. I have since decided that I didn't do him any favors with this grind and have made subtle changes that I hope will facilitate him in the future. In any case, this one came out great!
Duke's history has been with producing working knives for use in the field, with an occasional display piece. Again Duke stepped up in equipment and technique to generate this mirror polished blade. He knows exactly what I like to see.
Solid 416 stainless liners soldered to 410 stainless bolsters. This is another great idea from Duke. The stainless takes a better polish than NS, and is much more durable.
The first set of Zebra scales I sent were a bit short (I screwed up) so I sent these superb red and black giraffe ones from Giraffebone.com and Jantz. Duke did a superb job of fitting them to the liners.
After this it was a matter of etching the logo, final assembly and polish. Duke was in his element here and it shows in the results. Thanks a million, Duke, for all your time and trouble. That's all, folks.
