Restoring my CCC - an odd proposition
I have a bit of an odd proposition, as you can likely tell from the title. I have an old CCC balisong, don't know what it's supposed to be called, but it's pretty nifty looking with a lovely blade shape. It's been my only and go-to balisong ever since I gave my old one to a cousin as a gift.
Problem is, it's a little worse for wear. It's not exactly falling apart at the seams and nothing is actually broken, per-sey. It's just on the shoddy side.
Now many of you may be nodding your heads and shrugging and thinking to yourself "Yes, so? It's a CCC, it was bound to start falling to bits, just buy a new one!"
Here's the issue: I live in Australia. And for those of you who don't know, our idiotic government (which infuriate me on a daily basis for a large, large number of reasons that I won't go into now for fear of turning this into a big rant) have decreed that Balisong knives are as bad as handguns, rifles and tactical nukes and have banned them totally from the country. Getting a balisong through customs usually requires it to be shipped bit-by-bit (like my old balisong) or to just be extremely lucky (like my current one.)
And while another balisong is on its way from Knifezilla as a Charismas present, there's no guarantee when or even if it will get here.
As you can probably deduce from this, any balisong, even a CCC, is pretty precious to me as they're not something I can just pick up from the local flea market.
And so comes to my issue, I want help and advice on restoring my slightly worn CCC to a point where I can flip it without getting tang pins all over the floor.
ISSUES WITH THE KNIFE:
- Biggest issue with the knife right now is probably its loose tang pins. One of them has a habit of just falling out when I flip the knife, but can stay in the blade pretty well if I leave it alone. The other one is simply loose, but could get just as bad.
- Second issue is the lockup. The handles bang together when I flip, which is a big no-no and the latch seems pretty temperamental, sometimes it'll lock up fine, other times it won't lock up at all. This has momentarily been fixed with two o-rings around the bite handle, but I'd like to be able to take those off.
- Latch itself looks like it's held together by spit and rust right now, it hasn't snapped or anything but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't last much longer.
- The screws are utter crap, and won't come out with normal screwdrivers.
- Blade is mostly fine, but is dull as hell and has a few flecks of rust on it.
- Rest of the knife is generally okay, but I can see a lot of areas of tarnish and such, wondering how best to get rid of that.
PICTURES:
So, any tips on my odd little proposition? I know it's likely not something that exactly gets done very much, but any tips would be appreciated. I sort of want to find a metalworker or watchmaker to see if they could restore it, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea due to these knives technically being illegal here.
Thanks.