Author Archives: akadventurer

Yes, again. Once you start its hard to leave anything alone!

Outer corners of the bolsters, end of the frame were a bit too pointy and uncomfortable in my palm when holding the knife.

So I rounded them off. 🙂

Before;

And after;

Smooth and comfortable now, and looks better too I think.

Little fine sanding still needed, I hit it with a scotchbrite pad to satin the newly ground areas to match the pocket wear. But it still needs some hand work with around 400 grit to blend it better. I’ll get around to it soon, as I have shop time..
I don’t have many square ended knife patterns, but hadn’t thought about it much– Seems I prefer the look, and feel of rounded bolsters for at the least one practical reason.

Yes, I’m on a roll lately. Lots of free time to kill in the shop in between other projects, and little things like this happen.

Took the top hump/bump off the spey on my ’47 stockman. No real useful gain here, just asthetics. Im not likely to ever need the hump there for its intended use (its a spacer, keeps the edge/tip away from important bits while you are speying/gelding livestock.) Now its simply a wide somewhat blunt spear point.

Before and after;

And then I did a mod I’d intended to do when I bought the knife recently.

Some of you will know of my search for the “perfect” pocket knife. A 3.5″ to 3.625″ stockman frame, 2 blades at opposite ends, a clip point, and sheepsfoot. Hard to find.

This is my most recent acquisition on that concept, a Rough Rider half stockman. 3.25″, clip and spey.

Turned out to be a very slim, trim knife, both blades on one spring, and extremely thin bkade stock. Call it a gentlemans version of what I’m after. — A touch too thin and light for my tastes, but not a problem, just not what I’m after.

Anyway, needed to bob the spey into a sheepsfoot.

Before and after;

Was in the shop already, So I dropped the kicks on the sheep’s foot blades on my two #18 Case stockmans. Got the nail nicks down about 1/8″ or a little more lower.

Much more grip friendly when using the other blades, and looks better too.

A thread about Congress knives elsewhere on the net got me to thinking about this knife again. One reason I don’t use it much is the funky spear/drop point large blade. Yes there are 3 other blades, but it still puts me off..

Decided since it seems that even not using it I’m apparently not parting with it, so modding it won’t matter, might as well make it more what I want it.

So I clipped it.

Had it perfect and decided to touch it up a tad… Yeah, then had to fix the over touch and lost 3/8″ of blade… lol.

So I have a medium to short clip blade. Still infinitely more useful to me than the funky spear.

Actually turned out better, since completely re-grinding the tip meant I could raise the tip a bit.

But anyway, I end with 3 different blade styles, plus 1 duplicate. Large sheepsfoot, small sheepsfoot, pen, and clip.

And then, after I had dropped the kicks and lowered blades a few months ago, the pulls were covered on the two big blades at the tips, and hard to access toward their bases.

Added 2 more of the easy open/nail access notches like the ones it had for the pen/coping blades.

Now all blades sit sunk low for comfortable grip, all open easy, and all are a profile I can use.

Will see how she works out to carry now!