Interesting discussion recently about blades vs razor vs whatever in PSK. Last evening, in a collision of my too-many hobbies, I picked up a clone #2 X-acto knife for under $2 and made some modifications to it in about 15 minutes.<br><br>Chucked it in the lathe and cut it down to fit in an Altoids tin with the blade removed. It's still long enough to manage a secure grip in hard or delicate grip configs. I could easily make it shorter - for example, it would still be fairly useable at a length suitable for stowing cross-wise in the PSK BUT... read on...<br><br>I then bored out the butt end 21/64", leaving about a 0.010" bulkhead between the threaded bore in the head and the new recess. Then I threaded the new (butt end) recess 3/8- 24 NF for about 1/2" (that would be similar to 9mm x 1.0mm for a depth of 12mm for our metric friends). I can turn and thread the cut-off portion, but instead I'm going to pick up a suitable nylon bolt and o-ring at the hardware store today (actually, I may have them in one of my salvage bins).<br><br>This weekend I'll make an adapter for an Ez Awl needle, modify a hacksaw blade stub to fit (plus put an edge on the back of the hacksaw blade), cross-drill the bolt head for a small lanyard, and knurl a few places on the handle. Afterwards, I'll hit the whole thing with a coat of orange spray paint. I've been meaning to setup for anodizing, and if I make any more I'll anodize and dye them instead.<br><br>The handle will store sewing needles and an Ez Awl needle with room to spare - I may wrap several yards of thread around the needles. I could do a few additional mods to make it into a miniature Ez Awl, but am not interested - it will work fine the way I'm building it. I expect I'll have at most an hour's work total in it by the time I finish (which makes it expensive, I suppose).<br><br>It's pretty light-weight - the knurled steel sleeve at the nose is almost as heavy as the entire handle and collet. The cylindrical form factor is so-so but probably the best compromise in terms of bulk, stiffness, and useful interior volume. A #1 handle could be used instead (smaller blades and very little interior volume after boring out) and in fact I picked up one to modify in a similar fashion.<br><br>I'll post some specs and a few pics if anyone is interested.<br><br>There are a lot of additional uses this could be put to. For example, I can adapt a small diamond coated rod to fit. Any other ideas? I'm not sure this will earn a place in my PSK but it almost certainly is going into my regular repair kit - it will certainly displace my Ez awl, for one thing.<br><br>As I also have a mill and plenty of tooling for it, I am getting strange ideas running thru my mind when I gaze at all the lovely 7075-T9 and 6061-T6 scraps I keep "in stock"... but that's a heck of a lot more work (read: time). The "X-acto" knife handle conversion is so simple, I could teach a chimp how to do it in a few minutes. I am not a machinist and what little I know is self-taught with the help of the folks on another list, but this is simple. A lathe would not be needed to replicate this; I can describe how to do this accurately with a small drill press (and one COULD do it with a hand-held drill IF one was very, very skilled). Threading can be omitted; a plug can be made on the drill press or bought ready-made or whittled (not great for a lanyard, but there are other lanyard options). Knurling can be functionally replicated (if not pretty) by rolling on a board with heavy hand-pressure on a file or wood rasp.<br><br>Or one could skip the hollow handle. Cut-off the handle to desired length and most of the remaining handle can be slimmed down to a slab type cross section with a rasp or file. tape needles to handle and wrap with cord or thread - there are many alternatives.<br><br>Questions, commets, more ideas?<br><br>Regards,<br><br>Scouter Tom