Pimping a Reese pimped Emerson

[Charlie Mike]

This was a fun project. I did some maint on a Reese pimped CQC7b that I had given to our roommate as a Christmas gift. He's a manager at an auto parts store and gets lots of use out of the knife and it was starting to show. I was bored last night and couldn't sleep so I re-pimped the Emerson.

Before:

After:

Great way to get myself tired and good practice as well.

 

[James Terrio]

I like it better all polished up like that Nice work.

 

[Charlie Mike]

I'm currently doing the same to my Reese framelocked Super CQC7.

 

[Jeff Pearce]

looks good...

 

[Charlie Mike]

Lets see... everything got 1000 grit silicon carbide and then hit it with the maroon colored 3M Scotchbrite pad. I did all that completely by hand. Hand rubbed is an understatement. I don't own a vice so I had the work in a death grip in my left hand while I sanded with my right hand. My hands are still cramping but it's that whole labor of love thing. Then all the large parts got the leather belt green polish treatment on the grinder. After a thorough degrease, several sessions with the blowtorch colored the Ti slabs. Then I decided to strip the blade. Wet/dry 1000 grit just wasn't cutting fast enough and I only had half a sheet of it so I put a used belt on the grinder and stripped it freehand. The thumbdisk screw was then loctited back in and ground flush after I enlarged the wave hook. Finally, I spun-polished all the screws to set it off.

Before pictures...

 

[James Terrio]

Random thoughts in no particular order:

Buy a cheap vise, bolt it to something sturdy. Or get a couple C-clamps and a stiiff board... point is, hold your workpiece steady and work around it.
You're working on multi-hundred-dollar knives, don't skimp on $50 worth of tools.
1000x is for polishing, not stripping.
I like the heat-colors.
That's the first time I've seen a cat-food label used as a backdrop for a knife pic.

Carry on!