Knife find story

J

jec88

Joined
Mar 6, 2012
Messages
818
I'll have to add pictures later............ I bought my son a metal detector and he found a knife on our property about a foot deep! You would have thought he found a gold mine when he came running in the house. It's not a valuable knife, but it sure has to be a tough knife. He found it on our property that we have owned for 16 years, so it has been underground for at least that long. The property was farmed up until the mid 1980's so my guess it has been underground since then and got plowed under. The knife, from what I can tell, is a 1969-1979 Schrade/Uncle Henry trapper. The scales appear to be fake stag, staglon and luckily the blades were stainless. A lot of cleaning and the knife is useable and actually has great snap. Looks like it was a new knife when it was lost, but the blades are dull. I think with a little more work i will be able to get most of the rust off of the back springs.
I have a huge oak on our property that has big limbs and when I clean a deer, I use the tree to pull it up. The knife was close by the oak so I 'm thinking someone else probably cleaned a deer under the tree too and lost the knife and it got plowed under.
 











Hopefully these will work. The first pics are as it looked coming out of the ground and the last is after lots of Hoppes gun oil. Still has a ways to go, but not bad considering
 
That's cool, +1 for salvaging another one that would have been lost to time and elements.
 
Great find! Maybe I shouldn't be because Schrade made durable knives but I'm quite surprised it's in such good condition. If photos become available of the knife when your restoration is finished I for one would enjoy seeing them. Interesting story, thanks for sharing it.
 
I can't believe it is useable either, with a pretty good snap to boot. It looks like the backsprings are carbon steel and where the backsprings meet the rear bolster has the most damage. I have no idea how it survived 16 plus years! We get alot of rain here too, and even had 5 plus inches the day before he found it. Evidently the fake stag from what I read is basically delrin and the blades are ss and the backsprings are carbon.


 
Looks like your son has a pretty good knife there, and an excellent "You gotta be kidding!" story when he tells his kids and grandkids how he got it. :)

I don't remember the name of the product, but Home Depot, Lowes, and Tractor Supply have a "paint" or medal treatment that turns red rust to black oxode, amd stops any further corrosion. You might want to give that a try.
000 or 0000 steelwool soaked in WD-40 will also take the red rust off, and not mess up the stagalon ... too much ... Might try masking tape to keep fron scratching/polishing the covers.
 
J jec88 - That's such a cool find! Some good penetrating oil like Kroil (or similar), and go easy & gentle on those springs at first, and I'll bet you end up with a nice user and conversation piece.
 
Very Cool. Thanks for posting that.
440A (Schrade +) actually is reasonably corrosion resistant, but that's still impressive for being buried that long.
 
Cool find and better story, very interesting. Cannot wait to see it cleaned even more.
 
Congrats on your A-1 salvage job, jec88! :thumbsup::cool:
Enjoyable story and thread.

- GT
 
Great stuff J jec88 , thanks for sharing. Hope you will posts some fully restored pics. Seems like I'm always the one on the other end of this tale....:rolleyes:
 
I bet your boy is out there still looking for the next big find. Great story.
 
bozack said:
I bet your boy is out there still looking for the next big find. Great story.
Click to expand...
Ha! You should have no trouble getting him to do yard work from now on. "Dig up some weeds, you never know!"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top