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Every now and again, you might find something knocking around in your attic or garage. Most of the time its junk. But sometimes you get something that has potential to be great.
My dad found a old scout knife and as it was rusted and dull he had no use for it and gave it to me.
The blade is sheffield steel with a brass guard around the top with leather coating the handle and it was covered in rust and paint.
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In this post I will teach you how to(roughly) bring a knife back up to scratch.
It's actually much easier than you might think.
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Your going to need...
Rough sand paper(I was using part of a old power sander belt)
The knife(Duh!)
At least one whet stone(i'd say for the best effects, get a 300 and 600 grit, then maybe a 1000 grit if you want it razor sharp?)
Some kind of good knife sharpener(I used my Gerber ceramic pocket sharpener)
Right, on with the instruction!
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Firstly here is the knife.
As you can see its pretty grim. There's paint on the handle and the blade and end are rusty and dull. The blade was a lot more rusty but I had a go at it before I started photographing it.
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1. Sand Paper.
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This section is the one that will cause the most obvious difference. Your going to want to be somewhere you don't mind getting covered in rust so outside is great.
Rub all of the blade and any other metal sections till they shiny like sunlight(Can take a very long time especially if the blade has grooves in it).
The handle on this knife was leather and I decided I didn't care if it got a bit scuffed as long as there wasn't any paint on it anymore so I sanded that a bit as well.
Here's the knife after. And just for comparison here's the before again.
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2. Whet Stone.
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So this part your going to need a whet stone. I only had one old one to use but I've suggested the grit that you would need to make your restoration better.
Soak you whet stone in water for about 10 minutes, then using the full length of the stone and moving the blade so all of it makes contact throughout the strokes, drag the knife backwards and forwards at the angle you want you edge to be(that was as technical as I could make it I'm sorry).
Do this for about 15 minutes or so swapping the sides util you can feel more of an edge on it then move up to the next grit and repeat.
I don't know if you can really see but there is a more visible edge then before it was sharpened here's a close up.
Thats still fairly crap but oh well.
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3. Knife Sharpen.
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This is the final part which you don't have to do if you are very good at using a whetstones, but I thought it would be good for a final finish.
Just run your knife through as carefully as you can about 15-25 times until you think its as sharp as you want it then you're done.
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Give the blade a wipe down to clean off any crap thats left over.
I hope this helps anyone out who's got a old knife that needs some TLC.
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Follow me on Twitter: @strollingmen
And Instagram: @strollingmenblog
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- Don't Waste Old Tools -
- Louis -
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