Thread: Sand and Polish or Leave Character Marks?

I've had good luck with evapo-rust and then the steel wool/WD-40 treatment. If you decide that you want to go further, you can start with higher grit sandpaper and work down and then back up to make sure you don't loose the etching. It's more time that way, but let's face it, it's fun time!

Congrats on the new Fall Assignment. That has me reminiscing about the brief period in my life when I had a teaching gig at a local community college. Fall was always an exciting time--good memories.

I usually like to leave them as is, but if you're not going to use the original scales, the blade is already out of them, why not give it a going over. Some of the ones I see lately are really impressive. I'm not ambitious enough to do it myself, but if you are, go for it.

Once you remove the pins what time period are you going to restore it to?

That makes it not original, but that may have been the 4th set of scales on that blade......

If it is serviceable in its present condition I tend to let it be. If it is useless yo have nothing to loose.

Just my opinion!

Thanks for all the insights, fellas-To be clear, if I do rescale it, I'm not doing a "restore" to any period at all, just making and fitting a set of scales that suit my design aesthetic and still developing skills.

I'm going to start by trying some 3M Marine Metal Restorer Mike aka Outback is graciously sending me. I may even try it on a buffer or use a fat round pencile eraser in a drill press as I've had good results with before-we'll see what that yields.

But I got to scratching around a bit on the black spots, and sure enough, there's deep pitting underneath. And I don't have a fat wedge's worth of steel under it to muck around with.

That is the slippery slope on hollow blades for sure. I killed one by hand sanding it too thin and it has impossible to hone. It is best to start with cleaning all the black off and then assessing how deep the pitting underneath is. I think you have this one well under control.

Well, thanks to Outback/Mike sending me some 3M Marine Metal Restorer, I got it cleaned up pretty well. I got most of the tarnish and discoloration off, and then buffed it quite a bit on a cotton wheel with fabuluster. I didn't expect to lose the black devil's spit, but I'm satistfied, and will probably pin it up today.


Thanks again Mike!

Now that turned out real nice!!

Looks a heck of a lot better, and no sanding.!!