Thread: Looking for advice/opinions

I picked up this blade at a flea market ether other day, very rusted, very cheap. I grabbed it because I thought it would be good to have a practice blade to mess around with some.

No markings on the tang, but it has tested xx on the spine, so I suspect it might be an older Case blade. Once I unpinned it and took the scales off, I was able to get a good bit of the rust off without too awful much damage remaining. I began to think it might be viable, except for a couple of things. There was a lot of very weakened metal at the toe, and some of the little pitting went down to the edge.




So what I did was take it to work and carefully cut and grind and shape the toe where it's all strong metal again. Then, just because this is sort of a test blade for me, I cut a thumb notch and jimps into it. I kind of like the way it looks now.



I've managed to sand much of the edge pitting off now too, but not all. I suspect I can get the edge ok now however.

So is this worth continuing with? I never let the blade get the slightest bit hot, and I'm starting to think it might work out. Have I committed a travesty against a great old blade? I'm just looking for a little feedback and guidance here.