Turning a camping memento into a knife

This was my first survival bushcraft knife from ESEE Knives. I love survival knives and decided I wanted to buy the best - something unbreakable. After a lot of research over the internet, I decided on the ESEE 4. ESEE have the best guarantee on their products you will ever find. Break it and they replace it. No questions asked. I fell in love with it and soon placed my order to ship one over from the US through theknifeconnection.com. I had planned on getting the desert tan colour but made a rookie mistake on the order code and got the jungle green with orange G10 scales. I loved the knife, but the orange look wasn't quite what I wanted.

The scales are easily replacable, and so I started to research alternative scales (eg handles). I discovered a number of forums on which people were personalising their ESEE knives in all kinds of clever ways and so I was inspired to create my own personalised knife .

A year earlier, I went on a 4x4 adventure with my good mate Tim and his brother Pete up through the remote Australian interior. One night we camped in an arid desert surrounded by mesa. Finding wood for a campfire was difficult due to the sparseness of the vegetation, but after some searching we found a standing dead tree and began to chop it up. It was impossibly hard and dense, causing  the axe to ring as if striking iron on iron. It was well seasoned, burning strongly and releasing a lovely aromatic smoke. We cooked lamb chops over the fire and told stories until it was time to curl up in our swags. The whole experience was so memorable, that I decided to take a small piece of the wood back with me as a souvenir of the trip. At the time, I had a vague idea of making something with it but now I knew that it would make the perfect scales for my ESEE!

I had decided to give my knife a complete makeover to go with the new handle and so the process began by convexing the edge of the blade using a piece of foam rubber with different grades of emery paper on top. It was the first time I had done this and I found it rather nerve racking lest I ruin a perfectly good blade. But it worked just fine and with the convexing completed I moved on to phase two.

In the second phase I determined to etch the ESEE logos and serial numbers into the blade. I sourced a powerful etchant from a computer supplies store and began the process. It only took a few hours on each side before I had a distinct and deeply etched logo. The result was fantastic.

I hurriedly applied paint stripper and within minutes had wiped off the green epoxy coating (except on the flat of the handle sections where I left the epoxy to ensure corrosion protection) and revealed a very rough and unfinished steel surface. So it was back to the Emory paper for many hours of painstaking sanding to take back the blade to a mirror finish.

Now to the scales. I had my piece of desert wood, a roughly hewn branch approximately 2 inches in diameter and 8 inches in length. Because it was small so there was no room for error. I carefully chose my first cut straight down the center to create two equal slabs. The wood was exceptionally hard, making progress tediously slow. It also created a fine dust that was particularly irritating to the eyes. I later found out that this is characteristic of this rare tree. After a lot of research, I discovered this wood is probably Purple or Pink Gidgee a rare desert hardwood of the Acacia family that grows in a few remote parts of Australia. It is a perfect wood for turning and has been used in the past to make knife handles! Once the first cut was complete, the wood inside had a lovely reddish heart with a dense grain. I decided this would form the outside of my scales. I then proceeded to make flat slabs by making lengthways cuts along the outer edge of the two pieces I had created. Then I sanded them down perfectly flat so that they would sit flush against the knife handle. Once this was accomplished I used the orange G10 scales to trace the pattern on to my wooden slabs and went about carving them to shape. It took me many hours of cutting, filing and sanding before I finally had my perfect replica scales. I carefully drilled and countersunk holes for the screws and attached them to ensure they worked. A few minor adjustments and a bit more sanding and they were perfect.

To finish the handles I applied a natural wood oil, a mixture of Danish oil and carnuba wax and soaked the scales overnight in a ziploc bag. Then I allowed them to dry, sanded them back with fine emery and repeated. After a few treatments I buffed the scales with a dry cloth for a nice polished finish.

The mirror finish on the blade was too clean-cut for a working knife and 1095 high carbon steel is very easy to stain and rust, so the final step was to put a patina on the blade. I firstly used vinegar and water and heated this on the stove, placing the blade in the mixture. This worked well, producing an even dark patina over the entire surface however, it was not the look I wanted. So after removing some of the coating with fine steel wool I applied some American mustard with a scrunched tissue to create a mottled look. This worked beautifully and I applied two layers for different lengths of time to create light and dark variation. Finally a rinse with water, a polish with a dry cloth, and a layer of oil and the job was done!

This was a great project to learn some new skills and to turn a memento from a great adventure into something I can now use and enjoy.