Brass scaled MOD

Here's another mod, as usual made from parts of old, trashed Vics. The scales are polished over and over again to get to this mirror shine. A few weeks ago I received two fairly large pieces of brass from my uncle and started grinding, cutting and drilling... This mod was a challenge, because I never reused the original brass pins of Victorinox. Normally I use 2,5mm screws, but this time I wanted to see if it was possible to use the brass pins of a three layer Vic to make a two layered one. It was a succes and I noticed that when you use original parts, the knife opens up far better then with the srews. I used the large blade in combination with the woodsaw, just to keep it basic, but still usefull on a hiking trip. Adding the parcelhook on the back wasn't the smartest move, but I wanted to experiment with adjusting the original tools. To make it fit, I had to grind some metal of the hooks base. The spring works fine after the adjustment, but you can still feel that Victorinox makes these things with a lot of tought. Adjusting is mostly lowering the quality of a perfect product. The scales were a labour-intensive job. Brass is a hard material. Not as hard as steel, but it comes close to iron and to fine-tune this, it takes a lot of grinding-looking-grinding-looking-grinding, well, you know what I mean... The lanyard was made of 550 paracord in a knot I found on Instructables.com... I love doing this, and started my next one with oak scales... Don't see this ending soon... ;)

Today I tried to give this knife the display it deserves. My grandfather, who told me everything I needed to know about metal and wood, passed away a few years ago and the brass was a leftover we found in his workshop. This gives the knife, for me, a more spiritual meaning and I tried to show this on the box I made today. Don't get me wrong... I bought the box and made the inside from black cardboard. It may look easy, but it takes a lot of adjusting before the knife fits! I hope he's proud of what I've achieved...

After I bought a Dremel engraver, I just couldn't resist to make some changes on the scales and the main blade. There are some flaws, but for someone with zero engraving experience it looks.... ok... ;)