Thread: My second

Well cleaned up a 15/16 Joseph Rodgers & Sons Celebrated India Steel. This is my second restore. I cheated and bought a set of scales instead of making them from scratch. Been awhile since I have been on between deer season the holidays and the lost of the family dog it has been a heck of a month. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.

Looks pretty good. The after picture is a bit hazy. Streaked horn scales? I always liked those. Looks like the face etch got beat up a little before you got it. Based on what you had to start with it seems you did well with it. At least you were able to save it. Sometimes you can't. It's a balancing act with pit removal. Not too much hone wear either which is always a plus. Nice work.
Sorry to hear about your dog. That's a gut wrencher I know.

...oh yeah. Hope you saved those old scales. Those are very refurbishable. Horn is probably the most salvagable of all scale materials. Those could be made to look brand new. Look through the what are you working on thread in the workshop. Lots of good information on horn restoration there. Mike is the master of horn repair.

Yeah I was planning on reusing them but one scale is a red color and the other one is black. Any way to so-call bleach them to re-dye them

Just dye them black, again. Of course you'll have to sand and prep them, beforehand.

Don't use CA on them before you dye them.It won't penetrate. Looks awful

Sometimes old horn that's been dyed is streaked or mottled/sunburst underneath. I have found beatiful streaked honey blond horn under dye before. It must have been unpopular at one time so they dyed it to cover it up or make it look more uniform.

Just as a visual, for Paul.

Here's a recent example.
https://sharprazorpalace.com/worksho...ml#post1979826


They were a dark brown when I got it. You can see what they started like a couple of pages back from that and the progeeasion in between.