A pocket knife is a tool that many of us carry and use every day and most pocket knives include a clip so that it can be easily accessed and ready to go when its needed. Although knifemakers have come up with some beautiful clips to compliment their knives a custom clip is a great way to make your knife unique.
Most pocket clips are made from sheet metal so the WAZER was an easy choice when deciding how to cut my custom clip. I wasn’t going for anything fancy, I just wanted a unique pocket clip that fit the profile of the knife well. Below is what I came up with.
Once I had my clip cut I discovered another challenge that I had not anticipated; making the bends straight and appear nice and clean. You can see on the first version that some of the bends are not straight and the clip does not sit flat against the knife handle like I was hoping.
After a quick brainstorming session I realized that I could use the WAZER to assist me with the bends. Placing slots directly across from each other where I want the bends gives me two advantages, the metal will bend more easily and I had two marks to line up the bends to be perpendicular to the length of the clip.
This allowed me to get bends that were more reliable and that I was much happier with. Check out the working prototype below, note that I removed the round part on the bottom of the clip so that it fit the length of the knife better. (The original was designed for a Benchmade 940, the picture below shows the clip on a Mini Griptilian)
Next steps are to brush up on my metal polishing and find a way to make a deep carry clip! Anybody with knife making experience please feel free to share any suggestions or links where I can learn more!
