An Interesting Small Climber

[Myron]

I picked up an interesting 84 mm Climber the other day.  I love the 84 mm VSAKs, and there's something really cool about this model specifically.  I think maybe it's just the functionality you get, packed into such a tight little package. 

I also really like interesting inlaid logos.  The Concordia Line is a Norwegian shipping line, still around today, and they also used to operate liners (as in passenger liners).  How fun it would have been to take a cruise or a trip on one of these back in the heyday and pick up one of these nifty Climbers in the gift shop.  Or perhaps they were gifts or rewards to crew members, in which case my daydream switches to being the captain of one of these golden age liners.  Me, in my burly Norwegian sweater, smoking a pipe, with this Climber in my pocket. 



When the knife arrived I was thrilled to see its overall condition was excellent.  In fact, it looks to me like the only implement to have ever even been used is the small clip point knife blade.  Everything else appears intact, original, and unused. 

The main knife blade has a VSSR stamp but nothing on the obverse tang.  The openers are shiny and polished, with the can opener retaining some machining marks that I've never seen on an 84 mm implement before.  The corkscrew is straight and true, and the inside area is remarkably clean and tidy, almost what you'd call immaculate. 

Sorry, this picture's a little out of focus.












That's the good news.  The bad news is that the knife has almost zero snap.  It's been my experience that the 84 mm knives can be a bit lazier than their larger cousins anyway, but this one is probably the worst I've ever seen.  A closer examination revealed the reason why.  Three of the four aluminum liners are cracked at the point of the center pin.  And at the corkscrew, the crack has actually resulted in a little chunk of liner material actually falling out, such that you can see the pin itself.  I can't imagine what kind of trauma would cause such a failure after the knife was built, so I am assuming that the damage was done at the time the knife was assembled, but was microscopic and not detectable.  Over time, it worsened and fatigued with a few uses, and then the knife was retired prematurely.  That's my hypothesis, anyway.






Like the rest of the implements, the scissors are in excellent shape.  They appear almost to have never been used. 




So the question facing me now is, what to do with this knife.  Send it to Victorinox and have the liners repaired?  It isn't clear to me that the scales would survive this process. 

Should I keep it as is?  Or should I cannibalize it and rebuild it as something else?  I'd appreciate your opinion. 

Myron

[Don Pablo]

Aluminium liners are known for corroding and falling to pieces sometimes, when kept in bad conditions.

[SAKPal]

Nice find

been after an 84mm with Scissors

[Rapidray]

Great find!...and yes to it being a gift shop item...now if you could also find a pen engraved to the liner...super cool! 

[Mechanickal]

Snap off the scales yourself.
Send it in scaleles, get it back with some brand new scales and put the old ones back on.

That way you'll even have some new scales in stock

[Myron]

Snap off the scales yourself.
Send it in scaleles, get it back with some brand new scales and put the old ones back on.

That way you'll even have some new scales in stock

Now that's a very interesting idea! 

[MacGyver]

Snap off the scales yourself.
Send it in scaleles, get it back with some brand new scales and put the old ones back on.

That way you'll even have some new scales in stock

 

Beautiful Sak....   

I wonder what on earth could have caused that to the liners though...

[AimlessWanderer]

Personally, I'd use it as mod fodder, and switch the small blade for a nail file from a Sportsman. 

[Mechanickal]

Alumnus homebuilt!

[Myron]

Personally, I'd use it as mod fodder, and switch the small blade for a nail file from a Sportsman. 

Alumnus homebuilt!

Exactly what I have been thinking today!  Home built Alox Alumnus, and I was also thinking of grinding/forming the can opener down into a extra-fine screwdriver.  I'd leave the can rim grabber thingie in place since it's what holds the tool up when folded, and just remove the cutting/shearing part.  Then reform the very tip end without removing any length to make a mini screwdriver suitable for glasses frames and the like.  Sort of a Technician's screwdriver for the 84 mm frame. 

The other thing that is super cool about this thing is the burliness of the knife blade's shank.  Check it out next to my modern Cadet:

[NutSAK]

The changeover to narrower blade stock with spacer for the 84mm and 91mm models is fairly recent.  I only own a handful of the narrow-tang examples.  I believe the changeover occurred somewhere around the 2005-2008 timeframe, but I'm sure someone will correct me.

I have a small climber like this one with normal scales, with the wider tang and clip-point small blade.

[Don Pablo]

Does the thin tang make the knife weaker or something? Aesthetics aside.

[MacGyver]

Does the thin tang make the knife weaker or something? Aesthetics aside.

Honestly, it doesn't make any bit of difference structurally.... the blade is exactly the same thickness as it always was, the only thing that was thicker in the older days was the tang.
To production that meant the raw steel blank (steel roll) was thicker, and more material was grinded off meaning more waste and cost of steel. That indent on the liner to make up for the thinner tang is bloody tough, it won't deform. Ant to damage it would take a hit big enough to damage the blade itself and surrounding liners, no matter the tang thickness...

So, aesthetics aside (and yes the thicker tang looks cooler), there is really no structural difference. Maybe the feel of the snap is just slightly different, but that's all.

[NutSAK]

Does the thin tang make the knife weaker or something? Aesthetics aside.

Honestly, it doesn't make any bit of difference structurally....

 

[Don Pablo]

Thank you for the confirmation. 

[Simyo]

I would still send it off to Connecticut to get new liners.  You can ask them just to replace what’s needed and they will even send you back the tools they replaced.  This was if you do decide to mod it than you have good donor parts.

[Myron]

If you're curious to see how this turned out, I ended up turning this Baby Climber into an Alumnus Technician.  You can check it out here:

https://forum.multitool.org/index.php/topic,79430.new.html#new

 

[Rapidray]

 Oh wow, that is very interesting! Makes me want to try doing something. Almost.