Little Restoration Project

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mdsmith

Joined
Jan 7, 2009
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Hey guys. An of my coworkers brought this knife in to work to see if I could fix it up a bit. It was one of his first knives. His uncle bought it for him at a camping store when he was a young boy. I've only really fixed up a few older knives that I've purchased, but never done it for anyone else. I'm a little worried about messing it up since it has sentimental value for him. Thought I'd do a before and after for you guys. Here it is.
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It's a Schrade 125OT. The tang is stamped Schrade Walden over NY USA. I plan of letting it sit in a mineral oil bath overnight. After this I'll probably take some steel wool to it to remove as much rust as possible. After that I'm going to put a good edge on it using the Sharpmaker. As for the sheath, I'm not really sure what to do to it. I though about cleaning is with warm water, the treating it with boiled linseed oil. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
One suggestion from me would be to leave the patina ON, unless of course the owner wants the blade shiny.
Another is that if you dont have something else, Mothers mag and aluminum polish works well on brass and nickle silver bolsters.
Good luck fix'n her up!
 
steel wool (000) and mineral oil are the right approach, even a penny can be used to get rid of flakey rust, first thing id do is dishsoap and hot water, dry completely and then do the mineral oil, i dont soak them though since sometimes it might not be the best for certain scale types... the sheath doesnt look to be in too bad of shape, maybe a light cleaning (wiping) dunno about getting it completely wet, not sure what it might do to the stitching.
Nice of you to clean it up, itll look alot better but the blade will probably be pitted from the rust i'm seeing on it, are the blades stainless?
regards
gene
 
Ivan - It doesn't say what kind of steel it is, but since it's an Old Timer, I'm assuming it's carbon. There will definitely be some pitting left behind, but that shouldn't be an issue. As for the sheath, it a little on the flimsy side from use. I had heard theat linseed oil tend to give leather a little bit of stiffness when it dries, which is why I was going to use it.
 
I think some moderation and caution are needed here.

I don't think I would go beyond some 0000 steel wool and oil, and some light rubbing on the blade
After a good clean out with some very warm water and Dawn, some 3-in-one in the joint would do it. Lots of long service left in that knife.:thumbup:

Don't use any oil on that sheath! Big no-no.

To treat the sheath, use a bee's wax material like Snow Seal, or other Bee's wax product. Oil will soften and degrade the leather. For all leather-oil bad, wax good!

Carl.
 
jackknife said:
I think some moderation and caution are needed here.

I don't think I would go beyond some 0000 steel wool and oil, and some light rubbing on the blade
After a good clean out with some very warm water and Dawn, some 3-in-one in the joint would do it. Lots of long service left in that knife.:thumbup:

Don't use any oil on that sheath! Big no-no.

To treat the sheath, use a bee's wax material like Snow Seal, or other Bee's wax product. Oil will soften and degrade the leather. For all leather-oil bad, wax good!

Carl.
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Beeswax product/neatsfoot oil etc are good stuff (leathers store will have these). You can even use Snow seal, if you have any.

To stiffen leather up, you can get it damp, and heat it in the oven. This is how "boiled leather" works.

This is a supposed to be a bit permanent though. meaning you can't take it back once done.

If you put a soaked piece of leather in the oven at that temp, it will wrinkel and warp if not careful.

One trick I have had explained to me was to take the sheath and get it damp a bit. Then take it and put it in a ziplock bag and into the fridge over night (so the water has a chance to penetrate and even out). Then into the oven at the lowest setting you have (mine only goes down to 170 degrees).

I don't believe I have ever taken a sheath all the way to dry at this temp. Just till it is hot.

Often, I just skip this step, and wipe a bunch of leather conditioner (your bees wax/ neatsfoot treatment of choice), and put it in the oven at low temp to get it soaked in. The repeat this several times till the leather won't absorb any more wax.

Then wipe off the excess.

On an old sheath like that (where I was trying to preserve it more than anything) You might not want to do the damp sheath and oven thing.

I would not hesitate to give it a good wipe down, and then add the leather treater and warm it up and repeat (Montana pitch blend is supposed to be another great one).


Another product I like to use is Atom Wax (as a top coat to my already treated leather). Just wipe on, let dry, and buff off. I find that this stuff actually stiffens the leather as well as treats it.
 
Thanks for the warning Carl. I had watched a video on YouTube about ax sharpening and care, and the guy wiped the handle down with linseed oil, then proceeded to do the mask. He said it would give it a harder feel. I guess I'll need to go out and get some leather treatment.
 
Looks like a sweet knife. My dad's got one from about 30 years ago. It's the same knife, but it has a liner lock on it, too. It's called the Schrade Mustang, I think. His had some rust on it also until he cleaned it up about a year ago. It turned out great, with just a few slight marks of pitting. Just FYI, he used 0000 steel wool.
 
mdsmith said:
Well, here's what I came up with. It cleaned up pretty good.

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Nicely done!

These Old Timers are some of the best-looking knives around, when they have that somewhat patina'd, even a little pitted, 'character' to them. Great steel (1095), with nice springy temper.

That knife looks perfect to me. And with a newly-fresh & sharp edge on it, it'll BE perfect. :thumbup:
 
Obsessed with Edges said:
Nicely done!

These Old Timers are some of the best-looking knives around, when they have that somewhat patina'd, even a little pitted, 'character' to them. Great steel (1095), with nice springy temper.

That knife looks perfect to me. And with a newly-fresh & sharp edge on it, it'll BE perfect. :thumbup:
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Thanks man, I got her good and sharp. That Schrade steel is some of the easiest stuff to sharpen. The edge on this thing was pretty non existant, but after about 15 minutes on the sharpmaker, it was shaving hair off of my arm.
 
mdsmith said:
Well, here's what I came up with. It cleaned up pretty good.
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Maybe I missed it, but did you end up using steel wool and mineral oil, or what? I generally use Mother's mag wheel polish, but have never cleaned up a knife with that much patina.

It looks just right. I have a few Old Timers that I have gotten cheap off of ebay just because its fun to clean them up like that. You can find what look like junk knives that are really a nice knife hiding under the patina.
 
I ended up giving it a really good coating of WD-40 since I was out of mineral oil. After it soaked for a while, I took some steel wool to it to see what I could get off, followed by a good rinse in hot water. More WD-40, and a light sanding with very fine grit paper on some of the trouble spots. Rinse again with hot water. Another once over with the steel wool to even out the look. Then I sharpened it up. After all of this. I used some hot water and dawn to clean out all of the grim and debree from the sanding, ect. I used the thin end or a wooden shim covered in a rag to get down in the joint to clean out any resedue. AfFinally, I put a few drops of 3-in-1 oil in the joint and and worked the blade back and forth a little. The blade went from really hard to open, to a nice smooth action. I'm actually surprised how smooth it got.

I forgot to add that I used a stiff bristle scrub brush to clean all of the gunk out of the grooves in the handle.
 
Looks great to me. Only thing I'd have done differently is avoided the WD-40, but you did the right thing by oiling the joint afterwards. When Wd-40 dries it leaves a film that seems to attract dirt, so anytime I use it, I clean it off and put a proper oil on whatever I'm cleaning. It is great for chasing water out of nooks and crannies (actually what it is designed for) and for cleaning sharpening stones (not water stones though) and diamond stones.

The knife looks great and has 99% of its useful life left in it. Your friend will be or should be thrilled with it. - Ed J
 
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Actually, it looks better than new because of its character, yet it's lost that beaten-up bottom of tool-box look of before. Those bolsters certainly looked corroded in an unpleasant way. In another thread, it was pointed out how useful pipe-cleaners are when it comes to re-juvenating the insides of a knife, this is very much the case.

As for the sheath, I may have to deviate from others here: I've used what is called Mink Oil to very great effect on sheathes and leather straps on packs etc. It is probably a fat rather than an oil and it has excellent waterproofing qualities for boots, decent shine too.
 
yep i love it. nice work.I have a similar one .The previous owner had "engraved" their initials into the bolster. It looked like s*%t so I buffed it with a wheel. came up really shiny (which i like)
BUT the heat melted the delrin and kind of smoothed out the sawcut pattern colse to the bolster.
Lesson Learned.
 
meako said:
yep i love it. nice work.I have a similar one .The previous owner had "engraved" their initials into the bolster. It looked like s*%t so I buffed it with a wheel. came up really shiny (which i like)
BUT the heat melted the delrin and kind of smoothed out the sawcut pattern colse to the bolster.
Lesson Learned.
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That's a very good point, when considering how to clean these up. I had to be careful with my Dremel & felt wheel (used with compound), when shining up my 108OT with the same sawcut Delrin. It's very easy to overheat the Delrin and melt or deform it. On the other hand, if one is aware of this, the Delrin can really be polished up if done with very brief, very light contact on the felt wheel.
 
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