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Knife Restoration

I'm not really sure if this is the right place to post this but here it goes.

My girlfriends grandfather collected pocket knifes over his years. After ten years of sitting in a desk draw after his death, my girlfriend let me have one. I wanted to do a full restoration on my own but after reading some material I quickly realized that this was something way out of my hands. So I'm asking for some help. I have the knife fully taken apart and all the pieces together. What I'd like is a full blade restoration, every thing needs to be spotless. I have plans of getting something engraved on the blade after it's put back together. I'd also like for it to be put back together, lol. :001_smile

If anyone would like to take up this project please PM me, or if anyone knows of someone who could do it but is not on these forums, please let me know. I can post some pictures of it pre-dissasembly if anyone would like.

Thanks,
 
I just happen to enjoy restoring knives myself. I would need to see pictures of the blade and it's condition before I could even begin to give advice. Please post some pics and i will give some advice.

This could be anywhere from a simple project to something that may take weeks and supplies that you do not have.

I have subscribed to this thread so it will email me once you get some pictures up.

I highly recommend doing this project on your own as it will make the value of the heirloom even more significant. I recently restored a knife of my grandfathers that my mother had unintentionally damaged. She had left it in a leather sheath for 20+ years and it was very pitted.
 
Hey cog....I live in Frisco myself and I too have an old pre WWII folder I would be interested in see if you could restore. Its just an old folder, missing its orginal scales and has a broken tip on one of its blades. Not necessarily looking for blade replacement, just the scales and restoration. I have some old Pre Ban ivory I wanted to use for the scales if you arer interested in the work.
Let me know
thanks
 
I just happen to enjoy restoring knives myself. I would need to see pictures of the blade and it's condition before I could even begin to give advice. Please post some pics and i will give some advice.

This could be anywhere from a simple project to something that may take weeks and supplies that you do not have.

I have subscribed to this thread so it will email me once you get some pictures up.

I highly recommend doing this project on your own as it will make the value of the heirloom even more significant. I recently restored a knife of my grandfathers that my mother had unintentionally damaged. She had left it in a leather sheath for 20+ years and it was very pitted.

Well my only issue on restoring it myself is putting it back together. I know I can get the blade looking right but I have no clue when it comes to setting the pins back.

Here's some pictures:
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*Here's the hammered in bolster
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Fully open
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Close up of larger blade
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Close up of smaller blade
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The knife should not be disassembled in your case. The blade that is broken at the end can have a point brought back to it but it will never look normal again. Blades are thinner on the cutting edge than they are on the back edge. If you were to reshape the broken part, the bevel of the blade will be different on the reshaped part of the blade than the rest.

That being said, the blade can be reshaped and polished to look pretty damn good.

As for the other blade, it could be brought to look almost new with some work. Unfortunately I am afraid that you would lose your lettering. I do not know how important the lettering is to you.

As for the edge end of the closed knife where there is some wear, we could round that puppy off and her her looking pretty good.

I could work on this for you if you wanted me to. That being said, I am not a professional and have only done this on personal knives. The knife will never look new again, and being an amateur I could make some mistakes. I am pretty good at it and have performed this about 5 times.

You could also do it yourself and I don't think that this blade would be very hard for you to do.

http://users.ameritech.net/knives/paper.htm

They sell wonderful sharpening systems. In your case the grinding wheel would be used only on the broken blade to re shape it and get an initial bevel for the cutting surface and to round off the edge of the closed knife.

The rest would be using the polishing side to bring the thing back to mirror shine.

I do not use this system to actually sharpen knives as I can never get a perfectly straight bevel. For the sharpening I use a diamond sharpening stone to get the proper bevel and bring it to a razor sharp edge. I finish with the polishing wheel so that I can literally shave with my knives.

You must take great care not to let any of the tools touch the scales, they will eat them up quickly. Ohh, and go buy a cheap knife, break the tip off, scar it up like yours, and practice with it. This system can sometimes work quicker than you would expect and you are left with little to no blade left.


@Flattop...

Unfortunately I have no experience with scales at all. I am sure it could be done. They appear to be riveted on. I imagine you would slowly bring them to shape and from my experience with fake ivory and bone is that my grinding wheel melt it pretty quick.

I must say that I don't think that my skills are up to the challenge of working with Ivory. I would hate to destroy it. Although the process would be slow, I would probably use sane paper to bring ivory to shape. Slowly and without too much heat. It would take a long time but would be worth it to keep your precious ivory undamaged.

As for attaching it to the blade, I imaging that you would need to drill out the old rivets and use a press to install new ones. Another option would be to break the old scales off and leave the rivets in. Then carefully drill holes in the ivory so that the new scales fit and the old rivets come through them. Then you could use some sort of high strength glue or epoxy to keep the scales on.
 
Thanks. Well the knife has been dissembled. :(

I'm going to get my own wet stone, I have a grinding wheel I can use to reshape the ends but I'll have to do most of the detail work with a file. The lettering isn't that important to me, it's mostly gone anyways. There's a good folding knife assembly book I often see that I'll pick up to learn more about it.

Thanks for the help! (and the move) :)
 
Assuming those brass dealies holding the scales on are what I think they are, they're pinned. There should be two similar looking ones on the other side, perhaps flatter, more smushed, or with a very thin circular line of black (or some other color) on them.

I suppose its possible that they're through pins, in which case the knife can be easily repined with some micro-washers, brass tube, and brass micro-rivets, the likes of which can be fabricated or are likely available from a DIY knife or razor site. Those you just put the tube through the holes, washers over the tubes, and bonk the rivets in with a ballpeen or some other small hammer.
 
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