DONE! Refinishing/Refurbishing knives: My current project. DONE!

G

GrizzlyBear

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Dec 5, 2009
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Just wondering if any of you folks here do refurbishing/refinishing of knives. Older knives, perhaps, that need love or a whole new look. I've done a few so far (old Forgecraft butcher knives of my mom's I posted a while back, and a couple hunting knives of my buddies'). I think it's kind of fun, breathing new life into an older, well used piece.

I had a coworker today hand me this knife and ask me if I could do anything with it. It's a Case XX Ridgeback Drop-point. He said it's his dad's and probably around 20 years old or so. I'm curious as to what steel this knife is made from.

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As you can see, it needs some TLC. My buddy said he keeps having to restitch the sheath due to stitches getting cut. You can see small rust spots on the blade as well as some tarnishing. I asked him if he wanted to have me rehandle it, but he likes the original handles, so I told him I would keep it as original as possible. I'm even going to recondition the old sheath and make it usable again.

So, now to get started.

I very carefully split the scales away from the tang with a thin blade knife and flat head screwdriver. And was rewarded with this...
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As I figured, there was some rust and tarnishing under the scales.

I took a piece of 120 and sanded the backs of the scales, after scraping off most of the residual epoxy. Then I also sanded the tang, flats of the blade and spine, making them nice and clean. I will have to tape the flats and sand the hollow grind seperately to keep the patterns different.
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While I took a break from that for a moment, I went ahead and started cutting and removing the stitching from the sheath.
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After all the thread was pulled out, I took the leather to the sink and soaked it in hot water, working to smooth out wrinkles and rough spots so I could flatten the sheath back completely. I layed it and the welt out and rolled them with my marble rolling pin to make them nice and smooth and flat.
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The picture makes the leather look a LOT darker and splotchier than it really is, I will hopefully get it all cleared up and better looking when it's oiled.

And this is where I stopped tonight, I've had a VERY long day at work and it's time to get ready for bed...I'm anxious to start on this again early in the morning!
 
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Nice,Yes i do this a lot.I love to see the old dogs come back to life also.The steel should be trusharp 420HC.Not the greatest,but takes and holds a decent edge.Stag or exotic wood slabs would have been cool on that,but the customer is always right they say.Here's a old Schrade i recently finished.
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I love refnishing old knives as well. I have a few slip joints that I cleaned up and some fixed blades as well. Looking good so far!


-Xander
 
Looking good, Mr. Bear. How do you plan to fix the sheath so its stitches won't get cut any more?
 
Thanks guys! Seals, that Schrade looks great!! I'm still trying to talk him into using some of this pretty Osage Orange I have laying around for his handles...dunno if that will happen or not though.

Tryp- It appeared that the sheath didn't have a glued in welt and the stitches were very loose...this combined with 20+ years of use allowed spaces to form between the welt and the sheath sides. Easily cut threads at that point. Restitching the sheath with heavy waxed thread using a saddle stitch, gluing the welt in and wet forming the sheath fairly tight should prevent future cuts.

Here is the sheath all cleaned up, I scrubbed it down with alcohol to clear up those dark stains. I regrooved the stitch line, burnished the holes with my awl point in my dremel, and got it ready to glue and stitch. Oh, I also took time to retool the Case XX logo. I cut around it with my swivel knife, beveled both edges then took my stylus and worked the letters down back into their original shapes.
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And here it is all glued and stitched. I also beveled and resanded the edge and began burnishing it as much as I can. The inside has been sealed with beeswax/neats foot oil.
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Will work more on it when I get home from work tonight. Can't wait! :)
 
Nice job on that sheath! Most I find are beyond repair due to being too dry and brittle. I think that will be a nice knife once again when your done!


-Xander
 
I'm in the process of refurbishing 2 old chef's knives. They were slavaged from a cooking school, used as yard knives for a while, and now will be going back to the kitchen. They are too good to let go. A caliper set at 0.025" will slide 1/16" up the blade, and this is after I dulled them/removed edge damage on my belt sander.

That stag handled refinishing job is a beauty. Gotta come back and check on the OP's project.
 
Update as of this morning. Been very busy with work and took 2 days to go visit my pregnant fiance 3.5 hours away who is in the hospital on bedrest.

I got the sheath to about 85% completion. It still needs to be wetformed and oiled/waxed. The edges have been burnished and I will complete them with the final finish. I took some brown dye and a fine brush and dyed the Case XX logo then burnished it with the end of my stylus...kinda gives it a branded look which I think is cool. I also managed to talk my friend into letting me use something other than the ugly black plastic handles....so I picked out a couple pieces of Osage Orange from my cut up slab. Also, the blade is pretty much finished except for sharpening.
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This picture shows the scales cut and sanded to just a bit oversize. The fronts have been ground and finished to 400, then wetsanded up to 1000. I will hit them with some 2000 in a final wetsand when I get back home this evening. Love the grain on this Osage!
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Going to a encampment/reenactment at Fort Massac, IL today...lots of really neat stuff there and mock battles from the French & Indian war. I'm going to hang out next to the blacksmiths and watch them for a bit :).
 
Good job restoring the sheath.
The knife is looking really good.
Can't wait to see the finished knife.
 
Man, FINALLY a day all to myself where I didn't have anything major to do...well besides a shop meeting at 7am...and packing for our move....lol.

Anyway, I accomplished a fair amount today. I got the handles on the Case sanded down and almost complete. I'm ready to add my pins, but I can't decide if I want to go with some brass and stainless mosaic (it's a brass tube with black epoxy and round SS rods that go around the inside...not terribly fancy)...or just some flared stainless tubing in the 3 holes. I'll get pics of the handle in a bit, my camera is my phone and it's also my internet connection lol.

So, while taking breaks from sanding the handle earlier, I started on this knife. I posted a thread about this one a week ago.
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I disassembled the knife and started cleaning. First thing to go was the chipped out ebony scales. I have some micarta and G10 on order...one set will go on this knife, just haven't decided yet. I had the bolsters lightly sanded and then decided to take some 320 and do a cross-hatch pattern on them. They looked great like this, but still were a bit too shiny for what I have in mind for this knife.

So, I broke out the muriatic acid I bought this morning and went to work. These are the bolsters as of 8:30pm...etched and ready to go. The acid brought out a crystaline structure on the bolsters that I think looks really cool...it even has depth to it when in the sun. Makes me wish I had ordered some carbon fiber instead, hehe.
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I decided from the get go that I wanted a low-flash tactical look to this knife. So I also dipped the frame in the acid, darkening it up nicely. And I did the clip as well. Any dots of rust seen in this pic have been cleaned up.
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Then it came to the blade. I've spent the most time on it so far. It got several dips in the acid, with baking soda baths in between. Then once the color was nice and dark, I mixed up some yellow mustard with the muriatic acid to make it stick and create shapes. I did several runs of blobs and streaks, then did another etch in the acid which kind of washed out the previous etchings but still left them as background fill. Then, I took my acid/mustard and laid down a tiger stripe pattern on an angle. This is what my efforts have produced, I really really like it. The brown spot on the back isn't brown, somehow my light and flash all mixed together and caught this spot where some oil was shiny...weird.
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And that's it for right now.
 
I like the sound of the mosaic pins. If I were your friend, I'd rather have those than simple flared pins. But that's me.:D
 
I know, I'm the same! But, it's going back into service as a pretty heavy user...not sure if he really wants the fancy look. I've also got some solid pin stock the same diameter, but I have no idea what it is...thinking heavy aluminum maybe?
 
Ok, so I went with the mosaics :) Here is the handle drilled and ready, then mosaics inserted and epoxied. I got a little wide with my holes so I mixed some of the yellow dust with the epoxy to help mask that.

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As soon as this dries, it will get a brass thong tube and final finishing begins.
 
I love this stuff. It has become one of my favorites to work with. Now, if I can learn the fine art of "toasting" it to bring out the grain in those awesome reddish brown shades!
 
I finished this project up tonight after work...actually, just finished trying to take decent pictures about 30 mins ago.

I tried wetforming the sheath, but I think the leather used is either oil tanned or oil treated, it soaked up water but didn't form like veg-tan. Could be that it's 20+ years old too. It darkened up a LOT with the beeswax/paraffin/NFO mixture I dressed it with. I love it, it looks great. The lanyard is latigo lace in a Chris Reeve style noose knot, also hit it with the oil/wax mix. Handles have been sanded to 320, then wetsanded from 400-1000. Then I took one of my ultra fine finishing pads (it's aqua on one side and grey on the other) I worked the handle over one last time. Then it got 2 coats of paste wax and a hand buff with microfiber towel. The tang was bent and I didn't check before epoxying my scales, so there is a dark line on one side. Not bad, but you can tell how it was bent. Probably couldn't have done anything for that, but still. Also, had my bit get a little squirrely on me drilling pin holes, got one of them too big so I mixed sanding dust with epoxy to fill...shows up as a light dark ring around the pin. Had this been an actual paying order, I would have started over or did something different for the pins. All in all, I had a lot of fun bringing back some life into this old workhorse. I hope it can serve another 20+ years!

Here she is!
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No flash on this one to see how different it makes the picture.
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And this is the edge I was able to get using my Lansky Deluxe Diamond set. It will whittle my beard hairs and I can do a free hanging beard hair chop. Not bad for about 20 mins worth of work using the coarse, medium and fine hones then a strop with green compound.
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