When I was a kid growing up I remember my stepdad having some of these old leather stack handled knives. I always thought they were cool, and remember them quite well for some reason. You could find the leather stacked handles on the old westerns, K-bars, Marbles, and Case Knives. Recently I had a customer ask me If i could do some restoration work on a couple knives he had and I was thrilled to see the old Case xx he had. It was in pretty bad shape, only a few dry cracked leather rings still held on to the tang, and I knew it was gong to be a challenge, but one I thought I could handle, literally. So i dove in and got it done. i thought I would share how I did this on my blog so anyone else who may need to do this can follow the steps i took as it worked quite well.
The first thing I did was research what the old case xx knives looked like originally and I found that this particular knife originally had the red and black spacers. They were stacked a certain way and some were thicker than others, so I matched what the knife looked like new almost perfectly. Once my spacers were cut I removed the pommel on the end of the tang. This took some work, but brute force won the day. The next thing I did was cut some 9 ounce squares 1 inch by 1 inch and soak them in water. I punched holes through all of them and them stacked them on a bolt with a big washer on each end and tightened them down real tight to dry overnight. The next part is key in making this work. I put the spacers on the handle in the order they came off the bolt, so they would all set nicely leaving no gaps. I would put one on, the tang and then contact cement the next one on. You want to leave enough space between the leather and tang to add some epoxy in there as you go too. When your done, add the last spacers and then epoxy on the pommel. I then sanded it down to about 400 grit, stained it to the original color, and made a sheath for it. All in all it work out well, though it was quite the challenge. I actually fell in love with the knife when it was done, so did the customer. Restoring knives is not something I do all the time, but I love breathing life back into a family heirloom.
The first thing I did was research what the old case xx knives looked like originally and I found that this particular knife originally had the red and black spacers. They were stacked a certain way and some were thicker than others, so I matched what the knife looked like new almost perfectly. Once my spacers were cut I removed the pommel on the end of the tang. This took some work, but brute force won the day. The next thing I did was cut some 9 ounce squares 1 inch by 1 inch and soak them in water. I punched holes through all of them and them stacked them on a bolt with a big washer on each end and tightened them down real tight to dry overnight. The next part is key in making this work. I put the spacers on the handle in the order they came off the bolt, so they would all set nicely leaving no gaps. I would put one on, the tang and then contact cement the next one on. You want to leave enough space between the leather and tang to add some epoxy in there as you go too. When your done, add the last spacers and then epoxy on the pommel. I then sanded it down to about 400 grit, stained it to the original color, and made a sheath for it. All in all it work out well, though it was quite the challenge. I actually fell in love with the knife when it was done, so did the customer. Restoring knives is not something I do all the time, but I love breathing life back into a family heirloom.
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