Thread: 5th Restore: W&B Fine India Steel

Hi all-Up to now, I've posted some early restoration attempts here on SRP sort of as a "what I learned/critiques welcome" kind of thing. Anyway, we just had two snow days for less than an inch of snow(no kidding-sometimes it pays to live in the South!), so I thought I would take advantage of the time to finish one up yesterday. Here's the before pic:

There was a fair degree of tarnish and devil's spit, only the faintest hint of the original fancy "Fine India Steel" etch on the blade face, and cracks/bug bites on the back scale especially, so as I had a nice piece of rosewood I wanted to use, I decided to do a full restore instead of keeping it original.
Again, scales are rosewood, sanded and polished up to 2k wet-dry, buffed with white compound, and a final buff with a few coats of wax. (In retrospect they may be a little longish). Unfortunately, I got some compound in the sap-wood on the pivot end which no amount of mineral spirits could remove-lesson learned. They still came out to be my best set of scales so far, though!



I've only attempted one wedge previously, and it gave me fits trying to fit and pin it (inside flatness issues!), so I blinked this time, went with a brass spacer instead (probably too big, but it closes snug and actually balances on the pivot, I guess due to the heavy blade). Now that I feel more confident on some other skills, I'll probably try again for a wedge on my next one.

As for the blade, I spent a fair amount of time on greaseless 120 on a 6" cotton concentric-sewn wheel to get out as much of the pitting as I could, trying to be careful to preserve the stamps and not round the edges too much (having learned the hard way on one of my 1st restores to go easy on the buffers!). Then up through the grits to 600, followed by 800, 1k, 1500, and 2k wet-dry hand-sanding trying to get out all the scratches from lower grits. Then buffed with white compound. I didn't quite go for a full mirror here, as a few of those lower grit scratches would have taken a lot more time and patience to remove than I was feeling. In any case, I think you may have to sell your soul to the devil to get the full mirror effect, and not everyone digs that esthetic anyway. I may try to pursue a more satin look on a future project...

I pinned her up with domed brass washers and NiAg pins, with internal brass thrust washers. The doming turned out easier than I thought it would, though I'm still spending way too long pinning. Every time I think I've filed it close enough to start peening, turns out it was too long after all. And yet she tightened up just fine, and snugs down almost dead center in the scales, so there's that.

By the time I finished pinning it and polishing everything up one final time, I had about frozen to death! My two little space heaters had fought a losing battle against 13F, and it was time to come in to enjoy a wee dram.

I'll report back after I've honed her up for a shave. I'm just too tired to do that after all the work I put into it and a rough session at the gym this afternoon. Thanks for looking! Any and all critiques are welcome. Aaron