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Joseph Elliot Double notch restore, WIP.
Here's how it looked before I started work.
Attachment 92056
Here it is after a sizable chunk of hole-filling and sanding.
Attachment 92058
Getting it taken apart caused a bit more damage to the scales than is evident in the first picture -- the horn was just very brittle (and in full-on moron mode I disassembled it before soaking in neatsfoot oil). So the repairs you're seeing in the second picture are more extensive than is visible. Three full gaps opened in the border around the 'Philadelphia' pressing, so I had to remake several portions of border. Also, the inside of the scales was in terrible shape. They'd been near-hollowed near the toe (some of which you can see in the first image). There were lots of cracks and delaminations to deal with too.
What's left to do.
There are still a couple of gaps in the scales I want to fill in, plus one of the leaves in the pressing has a bug bite in it. Also, there are a few spots that need more coat & glue to even out the texture a bit.
I'd like to get the blade sanded better, but it's proving really problematic. I might just give it a satin finish with the micromesh and call it a day.
The wedge needs to be trimmed slightly. It blocks the blade (which is why it's assembled with microfasteners at the moment). That's because there's a tiny amount of warpage to the scales and I'm too timid the process of fixing that to try. Plus, I suspect baking the scales in a vise might damage the pressing.
Finally, I'll make some custom washers, pin it, hone it and shave.
One answer among many: the infamous 'why a barber's notch'?
I've been continuing to dink around with getting the blade to close without hitting the wedge. I really didn't want to have to cut it down.
So I took out the bearing washers I'd added (it didn't originally have any). That makes it fit.
However there's something very interesting going on here. The pivot hole is designed as an oval and the tang tapers just a bit. The tolerance of distance between the blade tip and the wedge is such that you need to push the blade back slightly to get it to miss the wedge, and then once closed, it locks into place. The hollow toe (barber's notch) actually makes this easy and I could almost swear it was designed this way on purpose. The blade won't open without a bit of force and you have to use the notch to close it. Almost as though the notch were intended as a locking feature.
This might well change once I pin it for real, but for the moment I consider this a distinct 'hmmmm!' feature.
Then again, maybe it's just an artifact of the way I've fixed up the scales.
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The last mile is always the hardest.
Attachment 92145
A close up of the detail work I've done restoring these scales.
(the difference in color is due to different cameras and different times of day -- my main light source is the window of my office)
I'm filling gaps using horn shavings (from a piece of donor horn) and CA glue. From the initial attempts I've modified slightly and now compressing the horn shavings down after I apply the CA glue, repeating until the gap is filled.
Getting the gap in that one leaf below the flower filled without putting a bunch of filler-material in the outlying design was... interesting.
I'm not entirely happy about the fine details I lost in getting a good polish, but having dug a piece of pre-restoration photo reference out of my phone's camera means I can (and might) go back in with a dental pick and add the detail back. Getting the leaf shape wasn't horrible. It's doing the CA coat & polish shuffle that's being a larger pain. That whole process of: coat! sand! polish! (find spot where the polish has gone through the coat) re-coat! sand! polish! (start swearing) re-coat! sand.... etc.
