Deep-carry wire pocket clip for 93mm alox

shibafu · **on:** June 26, 2016, 01:16:48 PM

I saw a post on a flashlight forum about making wire pocket clips from stainless steel TIG welding rods, and figured it could work for SAKs too. Sure enough it works great.
You can get different thicknesses of these rods; 1.6mm (1/16") thick seems ideal (it's the same thickness as Spyderco wire clips).

shibafu · **Reply #1 on:** June 26, 2016, 01:28:09 PM

Here's the how-to, starting with how I bend the wire.

I start by making the initial bend around a 5mm drill bit. Then I bend it over a 1" dowel to form the large radius.

Then it goes in a vice (with the jaws protected with aluminium angle sections to avoid marking the wire) to make the bends either side of the radiused section, ending up as in picture 2.

You can't really make the top bend in a vice because of the thickness of the jaws, so the solution I came up with was a jig made by drilling a couple of holes in a scrap of oak as shown in picture 3.

At each stage keep checking that both legs of the clip are even and parallel.

Finally it's back to the vice to cinch the last bends up. They need to be slightly over-bent to create a bit of pre-load to help grip your pocket when the clip is on the knife. Ending up as per picture 4. The only thing that still needs to be done is to trim the ends to length, but I do that after drilling the scales, to match the depth of the holes.

shibafu · **Reply #2 on:** June 26, 2016, 01:46:57 PM

Drilling the scales: I start by drilling two holes from the back (picture 1), and then use a junior hacksaw and small file to make notches down from the end of the scale to those holes (picture 2).

The next step is to clamp the scale upright in a drill vice, and use a drill press to drill holes down parallel to the face of the scale (picture 3).
They don't need to be deep, 10mm is plenty. But nevertheless this is a tricky job. With a 1.6mm diameter hole in a scale that's only about 3mm thick there's not a lot of meat on either side, and it's really easy to ruin a scale by blowing through the front or back. If you look closely at picture 3, you can see the hole on the left has just started to blow through the back of the scale a tiny bit at the end. You really need top quality drill bits for this. Small bits are often not very symmetrically ground at the tip, and that causes them to veer off as the hole deepens.

I was going to use a little bit of JB-Weld to secure the clip in the holes, but after doing a dry test fit (picture 4), I couldn't get it out again, so it seems the JB-Weld is not required!

Etherealicer · **Reply #3 on:** June 26, 2016, 01:58:00 PM

Love it

ReamerPunch · **Reply #4 on:** June 26, 2016, 02:20:46 PM

Fantastic job.

Toolslinger · **Reply #5 on:** June 26, 2016, 08:05:11 PM

That's pretty neat!

NKlamerus · **Reply #6 on:** June 27, 2016, 05:24:38 AM

Nice!

I'm now one step closer to the ledge I told myself I would never step off of.

Sparky415 · **Reply #7 on:** June 27, 2016, 06:50:06 AM

Nice work and great how to pictures Shibafu

magentus · **Reply #8 on:** June 27, 2016, 11:03:51 AM

Great stuff!

Syph007 · **Reply #9 on:** June 28, 2016, 12:04:40 AM

Great idea! How 'springy' is the clip?

enki_ck · **Reply #10 on:** June 28, 2016, 01:23:58 AM

Brilliant

shibafu · **Reply #11 on:** June 28, 2016, 01:01:02 PM

Quote from: Syph007 on June 28, 2016, 12:04:40 AM

How 'springy' is the clip?

The springiness is good. I'm sure the work-hardening from making the bends helps. How it will hold up long-term remains to be seen, but it seems pretty effective.