Thread: Custom SatinEdge Project

Hey dudes, sorry I didn't get to this sooner, been on nights this week. But figured I should start a new thread to document my process of bringing a satinedge from dull and sad to a piece that I will soon love and cherish. Disclaimer I am not Glen, Max, or any of the other great resto-pros, nor do I pretend to be.

So with that out of the way here are some pictures of the blade when it first arrived. I only paid $35 dollars for it so I thought I got a good deal. However when I first got it, I noticed a rainbow, iridescence effect on the blade. I had read somewhere on this forum a while ago that it could mean the temper is toast. However after posting pictures, members with more experience told me that it was a common effect from off gassing.



I started right in on the blade wet sanding with 1000 grit and working up to 2500 before going to polishing compounds. The rainbow effect is gone, and all but a few deep scratches and some light pitting remain on the blade. I was impressed by the grind so didn't want to sand to much and risk screwing it up so figured I could live with the the imperfections.




Taking the bolsters off was pretty straight forward, a 20 min bath in acetone softened the scales up enough to carefully remove them. I did the majority of the polishing while they were still on the old scales, and then once removed I ever so carefully cleaned up the insides with a q-tip and some patience.

I purchased some PVB plastic to make the scales with and am kinda at the point where I need to start thinking about the end game. I have about a 1/32 or so that needs to come off near the pivot hole at the top, don't know if the picture shows it. Again no where near close to the final product but getting there

I am going to gold leaf the stamps on the tang, and also going to laminate a very thin sheet of abalone veneer on the insides of the scales. I need to do some experimenting with small fragments of abalone and scrap PVB to make sure that I get the effect I want. Atm I am waiting for the oil based size and abalone sheets to to arrive, so expect many, many more pictures documenting the ups and downs of this project. This idea was purely conceptual so not %100 sure how this is gonna turn out. I am confident the gold leafing is gonna look great, just not sure what it's gonna take to get the abalone veneer to look how I want.

Best Regards,
-Laramie-