Elinox Camper dilemma

[frugalscotty]

This week i found an very nice Elinox Camper at the state surplus outlet, unfortunately as you can see below, the main blade is broken off. My original intent of buying this was to harvest the scales and put them on a different knife to make a conversation piece. But now I am reconsidering. Is that the right thing to do? I suppose the options are:

• Keep it as is for a collectable
• Harvest the scales and junk the rest
• Harvest the scales and send the remains to someone for mod fodder
• Trade/Sell to a interested collector
• Send to Victorinox for repair (How likely is it the blade could be replaced with an Elinox stamped blade?)

What is everyone's opinion of this dilemma 

[nuphoria]

Hmmm.... tricky


Have you considered taking it all apart, replacing the main blade and rebuilding it?

It's totally doable, but of course the blade is unlikely to be of that ilk.

[Neil]

What condition are the other tools in?  If everything else is spot on then its worth replacing the blade with a similar vintage one.

If the other tools are passable but not superb then I'd be tempted to clean them up, reprofile the main blade and use it.

I might be wrong but I'd be surprised if Victorinox could replace the blade with an elinox one    Might be worth sending them an email and asking though.

If none of the above works out then let me know what you want to swap it for and I'll do one of the above

[jazzbass]

My $0.02: It's a parts knife.

Elinox campers are not very rare (in fact, they seem to be one of the most common of the 91mm Elinox knives). In excellent condition worth $25 or so (on average on eBay). You could send it to Vic to have the blade replaced and take the risk that you even get it back instead of a new camper. But then you probably spend $15 in postage to Switzerland. I'd harvest the scales if that was your intent, keep the rest of the knife for parts or cool mods. The caplifter and can opener should be rough machined like the old alox tools, so they're always a neat addition to a custom knife. Likewise it should have a 5 turn corkscrew which is always a nice mod, except it doesn't hold a fine screwdriver.

[frugalscotty]

Thanks for the input everyone. Neil, I was tempted by your offer but in the end I decided to take Jazzbass advice and harvest the scales. I had not even considered that I might not get the same knife back if I sent it in for repair and the beautiful scales were the main thing I liked about the knife to begin with. The remains will stay in my parts pile until I feel confident enough to replace the blade myself.

The photo below shows the scales on a mid 80's vintage Explorer in like new condition that I got for a minimum bid on Ebay a while back. The original scales had some ugly engraving signifying it was probably a groomsman gift that got stuck in the owners sock drawer for over 20 years. With these new/old scales it is something I can carry proudly.

[ICanFixThat]

They certainly look great!  Atleast 1 big 

I think you made the right decision for you.  You will now enjoy this knife immensely for a long time.

 

ps... if you loose it you may confound the heck out of anyone that finds it    Keep an eye on it.

[Neil]

Yep, no letting that loose in the wild

They are nice scales though, I'd want to use them

[sawman]

It appears all worked out well 

[knyha]

Nice done!

I own one pair of those scales (metal inlayed Old Victorinox Logo) too. The blade of the knife is pretty sharpened down. But till today I have not find the decision if I should put it on other knife or not...