And then I started swearing.



It's all original, and was in bad shape when I got it. The scales were cracked at all the pins, dried out and just generally unattractive. I glued up all the cracks (except ONE!), repainted in the lettering (though I need to fix the H in ENGLISH), polished the living hell out of them and reassembled (oh yeah, there was a ton of hand-sanding on the blade too). Tap, tap, tap, tap, crack.

SWEARS.

So I'll take it apart, fix up the last few defects and call it done. But man, I was so close. SO CLOSE!

The moral to this story is: if you think a crack won't cause problems, it will specifically cause problems.

Thankfully, the cracked pivots are solid like rock, but I took those completely apart and glued them very thoroughly. It was that little hairline at the toe that I thought 'I'll just surface glue it and move on' which got me.

Oh, and if it looks like the scales are graduated from translucent to glossy solid black, that's because they are. They're really lovely. EXCEPT THE CRACK.