Bob's Swiss Army Knife Mods

When I was a little boy, Swiss Army Knives were the coolest thing since slicing bread.

I got my first one when I was 13, and I actually bought it in Switzerland. It was a 91mm, in classic red, which I think at the time was ALL there was. It got lost on a hiking trip at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore when I was 18. I replaced it, lost that, and then got a couple more that I held onto for a long time (see more below).

When in jeans I typically carried one on a carabiner clipped to a belt loop, but I didn't have an EDC for work wear until some time in my late 30s when I realized I'd look more professional if I started taking better care of my nails. So I got a Classic SD and that, on my keychain, became basically the only thing I needed on a regular basis. I lost and replaced a series of those!

At 60, I found out that with some tools and patience, one can disassemble and reassemble a SAK, and thought "awesome!" So I bought some new and used ones on eBay, and set out to see what I could do. This site just documents my results. I hope you enjoy visiting.

BTW, I also collect Calculators and Slide Rules. And I built an interesting simulation of The Prisoner's Dilemma. Click either link to visit my sites about those topics. And feel free to email me at bobwolfson@gmail.com.

This was the first custom knife I built from 2 Classic SDs.

A normal CSD has 1 layer, with the blade and file opposite the scissors. The blade and file are each half as thick as the scissors.

So you can add a 2nd half-as-thick layer with an extra blade and file. That's what I did, but I reshaped them both. The 2nd knife became a tool for cutting into blister packs, and the 2nd file became a bottle opener.

I filed off the keyring attachment for a totally smooth tool.

I thought it would be cool to have a metal-clad SAK with a toothpick and tweezers. Victorinox doesn't sell anything like that.

Actually milling metal is beyond my toolset, but I was able to instead build up scales out of multiple layers of aluminum. Obviously, the inner layers are grooved for the T&T.

The aluminum is slightly heavier that the plastic of stock scales, but it's still a very light knife.

Victorinox makes just a couple knives at 74mm. The Executive has 2 blades, scissors, a file and an "orange peeler" (which is actually pretty good for its stated purpose, though pretty useless otherwise).

It normally has 2 layers, one with the scissors opposite the 2 blades. The other layer is for the file and peeler which are normally opposite one another.

But it turns out that the bottle opener of a Rambler (58mm) is double the thickness of the file and peeler. So you can move the two o them to one end of a layer opposite the bottle opener at the other end.

The above build required 3 donors - 2 Executives and a Rambler.

Obviously, the Rambler provided the bottle opener. The 2nd Executive provided an extra 1/2 layer of springs.

What remained sufficed to reassemble a Classic SD, and this Executive sans file and peeler. I put brass scales on it to make an attractive and very thin "Executive Lite".

I like the Rambler - a Classic SD with a bottle opener and decent Philips head driver.

As with the aluminum-scaled knife, above, I built brass scales out of several flat layers. Brass is way (weigh) heavier than aluminum, though, so this pretty knife has some gravity to it.

Brass looks great to me!

I tried replacing the scales of an SD with single layer of brass. The result is nice and thin, though I miss the T&T.

I actually use the toothpick and tweezers often, so I built a holder just for them! It lets me carry any knife or multitool, and still have a T&T at hand.

Remember the 74mm Executive with transplanted Rambler bottle opener from above? I added a deep pocket clip to it, and it became my EDC. As far as I'm concerned now, if it doesn't have a clip, it's not an EDC candidate.

The clip is Sterling silver, and it's actually attached to the scale. This let me add it without having to disassemble the knife again. But for durability, it would be better off being soldered to the liner, or being integral to the liner. We'll get to that last idea in a bit.

Next is Frankenknife. He started as my two old 91mm SAKs. Both had the usual can opener and bottle opener and old style awl without an eyehole. Both had two blades, but the little blades had different profiles, one being more of a drop point than the other. The one with the drop point small blade had a saw and a Phillips, the other scissors and a corkscrew.

I always found the Phillips to be more useful than the corkscrew (guess I screw more than I drink) but unfortunately that knife was in bad shape. One scale was gone and the exposed liner was badly nicked and scratched. Worse, the tip of the big blade and the keyring attachment had broken off. But the other knife was in very good shape.

So I decided to just try swapping out the corkscrew on the good knife for the Phillips on the beat-up one. Oops, it didn't work! The tang of the Phillips was thicker than that of the corkscrew! Which is to say that the main blade of that knife had an equally thick tang since they were part of the same layer. The similar layer of the better knife, with 2 blades and a corkscrew was simply thinner. So if I wanted the Phillips, I had to keep the corresponding two blades, even though that main blade tip was broken! Oh well. I reground the tip as shown below.

I debated about what to do with the saw. Really, it's not a very useful tool, but I decided WTF, it's thin. So Frankenknife has the blades, Phillips and saw from one knife, and the scissors from the other. I forget which one contributed the openers and awl, but they were identical.

I also decided to replace all the liners with brass ones, just for fun. And finally I added new black plus scales.

The rest of the parts made a knife with blades, openers, scissors, corkscrew and awl, but I also gave it brass liners.

Frankenknife in the wild. Colorado, 2017

Victorinox sells a knife with a money clip, but it's much bulkier than this brass-clad Classic SD.

To make it as thin as possible, there are no liners, just the brass scales, and one of them has a tongue that I fold over to make an integral clip. I've made several of these to give as gifts.

Here are a couple knives with brass sides. Using a conical bit in my Dremel tool, I beveled the holes in the sides. This provided enough of a lip that the peened pins could be sanded flush and still hold the knife together. It's not the strongest assembly, but I won't plan on putting a lot of stress on these little guys.

(click to enlarge)

In case you were wondering, this is what's inside a Classic SD.

There are 4 pins. Two anchor the springs, and two are pivots for the tools.

There's just one layer. On one side are two stacked springs, one for the blade and one for the file.

On the opposite sides are two more stacked springs, both for the scissors, which are as thick as the blade and file combined.

Note that one spring bears the attachment for a split ring for attaching the knife to a keychain. When reassembling a knife, one can choose to put it at either end. Victorinox normally puts it at the blade end, but I usually prefer the scissors end.

And here's what it looked like inside one of the donors for Frankenknife.

While the spring in the saw layer is pinned so it can only flex at one end, the spring in the other two layers actually "float". There's a slot under the "shoulder" feature which engages a pin that prevents the springs from moving lengthwise. But they are free to flex perpendicularly at both ends and in the middle! They're simply trapped by the 3 pivot points of the end and center tools. When flexing force is applied at one pivot point, the other two act as braces. Clever.

(click to enlarge)

And this is the blade/scissors layer inside a 74mm Executive. The two springs interlock so only one arm needs to be pinned, leaving room for 3 tools.

The small blade is half the thickness of the large blade and scissors, so it requires a spacer.

Meanwhile, the layer for the peeler and file has 2 springs, each pinned at one end like a 58mm Classic. It's half as thick as the scissors/blades layer, above.

Note that one of the springs in this example has a notch just like in the scissors/blades layer. It didn't in the other 2 Executives I've disassembled, so I don't know what happened here.

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