Steuben Sales Co. Fidelity and the Things I Learned

[strohk]

Here's my first complete restoration - still needs to be honed, though. Maybe this weekend.

In the beginning - dirty, a little rust, scratched, and cracked scales.

The middle - sanded the blade, homemade micarta scales. Scales got scratched up during pinning and the wedge came out kinda wonky, so I ended up scrapping them.

The end - polished with black palm scales.

 

[strohk]

What I learned:

Don't round the inside edges of the scales. Making a wedge for this is a little complicated and the reason these scales don't have one.

Don't let your son near the drying CA glue finish. Finger prints show up bright white but are hard to see in dimly lit conditions. Make sure to sand any finger prints off completely before putting on more layers of CA glue.

Plan pin locations better. I think the pin at the wedge end is too high. The middle pin, thrown in when I couldn't get the wedge to work, didn't allow clearance for the tang of the originally planned razor. Luckily, this one fit and was able to pivot completely.

Be VERY careful if you have to unpin because you didn't plan your middle pin well enough. Grinding the pins down can damage the finish around your pins and force you to use larger washers.

A scroll saw and belt sander make scale work much easier than a coping saw and hand sanding!

I'm sure there's more, but overall it turned out ok for my first fully completed clean-up/restore and re-scale.

 

[ANeat]

I think it looks great; If it were mine I might of went with smaller washers but ***, sharpen that baby up.

If your boys fingerprints are still on it, leave them there

 

[strohk]

The larger washers are to cover up where I nicked the scales with the dremel grinding off the pins when I had the other blade in it that didn't fit. I just wanted to get it done instead of sanding it down again and re-applying the ca glue. I was getting impatient after the setbacks with the wedge and the other blade . I can always go back and redo it again, though. Or even stack the washers.