Had a chance to work on Dad's old fixed blade over the Christmas holiday. Back with updated photos.
I used rust erasers, both coarse and fine, on the blade and followed up with 0000 steel wool. The edges of the erasers were small enough to get the metal on the exposed parts of the tang without messing up the leather. Poor old thing has a lot of pitting, but I don't think I can do anything about that other than oil it and tell dad to keep an eye out for recurring rust. Very much open to suggestions, though.
I did 2 rounds of saddle soap cleaning on the leather handle. I can't really see a difference, but the cloth I used got dark so it did something, maybe, and hopefully now it's protected to some extent.
It was butter knife dull and I'm still working on putting a good edge on it, but that's more testament to my sharpening skills, or lack of, than the knife.
Dad's really touched that I've put so much work into cleaning up his old knife, but aside from some elbow grease, I haven't done all that much at all. I don't know if it's too damaged to be a usable knife again, but even if it is, it has sentimental value and I want to at least stop it from deteriorating more. I'm finding it's also a really neat and rewarding process seeing the rust going away and shiny (or at least unrusted) steel coming through.
If that "smudge" I see on the guard of the Western L39 is an "L39", then it is a 1968-1972 version.
Western started stamping the model numbers on the guard in 1968 and dropped reference to "Boulder Colo" in late 1972/ early 1973.
Ha! That last photo is blurry, but it does indeed say L39 on the guard. Thank you for that info. :thumbup:
