Thread: Cracked Puma

I recently purchased a pretty nice Puma from ebay. As I was removing the rust and cleaning it up I found a small crack in the blade about 1/3 of the way down from the tip. I don't know if it is a result of my sanding or whether it was there all along obscured by the rust. My question is how detrimental to the shave quality is this? I am fairly new to restoring SEs and have yet to encounter this situation. Any advice would be much appreciated.
I have attached a photo but Im not sure my camera is good enough to pick up the crack. I can see it but maybe only because I know where it is.

Won't do it any good. How far up into the blade does the crack go ? Perhaps you can hone past it ? If you know what you are doing with honing either honing past it or if not you could try shaving with it carefully and see what happens. It may be salvageable or it may not. More knowledgeable restoration guys will be along. In the meantime welcome to SRP and check out the SRP Wiki at the toolbar above on the left for tutorials to get you started in shaving, honing and more.

I see the crack. Honing alone will not remove it but grinding the end of the blade where the crack is located will. If the crack will get worse, I have no clue. What I do know is that it'll probably drive you crazy knowing it's there.

Now that Max said he could see it I took a closer look and I think I see it above the bevel at the end of point up a little ways. What a bummer. I bet you could hone and shave with it like that but the pressure of stropping might make the crack run.

I wish the crack were in the end of the blade but unfortunately it is not. It is almost directly under the M in PUMA. It is about 1/8 inch long starting right at the cutting surface. I am a little worried about stropping but I'll give it a shot and hope the crack doesn't run.

I had one like it recently on a nice Winchester.I used my fingers to pinch the blade and put just a little pressure sideways next to the crack and "plink".A piece of blade half the size of a dime popped right out.NOT GOOD.