I've been lurking around since I found this site a couple of months ago.
I've been interested in edged weapons for as long as I can remember. I have been making Puukko-knives, swords and other sharp pointy things as a hobby for about 6 years. Mostly while I was studying industrial design...
My first contact with switchblades (apart from movies) was when my older brother bough one from Hungary. I must have been something like 7 years old. It was a beautiful italian stiletto with brass bolsters and wallnut scales. Since automatics were nearly impossible to get in Finland (they still are) the knife was somewhat mystical. Sadly my bro sold the knife to someone few yars later. I got my first autoknife back in -94 when a friend of mine brought me one from germany. It was a stainless bolstered leverlock with shell pullers and rosewood (I think) scales. I didn't know such things even existed... It was a nice knfe but the leverspring (? the thingy with the lever attached to it...) broke in two from the middle of the pin hole. Since then I have had two stilettos (one bad and one goodish) but I have been somewhat indifferent about them. I have been more focused with traditional finnish knives and medieval weaponry.
My enhusiasm with switchblades re-emerged when I remembered that I had stashed the leverlock knife somewhere. I found it and thought that I could repair it. Well, last weekend I took the scales off, disassembled the knife and spent about 8 hours grinding and filing a ridicilously large chunk of spring steel. When I was finnished, I had me a new lever spring(?). On sunday I made new scales (since the old ones were damged beyond repair) and assembled the knife and flicked it open. To my amazement it worked like it did the day I got it. Hurrah! The knife rose from the ashes like the Phoenix! The knife looked good and worked fine.
...for a while anyway. On monday morning I heard a disgusting -crunch- when I closed the blade as I was going to work. Nope, the leverspring(?) was fine. The kick spring wasn't. It was broken. Seems that the patch my knife was from suffered from severe heattreat problems. Now I just have to decide wether to ditch the whole back spring/kick spring -assembly (one piece) and make a new one, or to modify the existing back spring to accept a new kick spring (something similar to mikov's).
Sorry for the long post. I just needed to get this repair episode off my system
-mr
p.s. I can post pics of the process if anyone's interested...
