MW Seguine Knife Restoration Questions...

[tjtouchstone]

Hello, new here, hope I can get some answers. I'm in the process of restoring a knife to be a show piece in a knife collection and I'm worried that if I polish the blade and re-engrave it it will completely ruin any historical value. In the pictures you can see the blade is trashed, engraved on it is "Stuart Hamblen - 1969"

This knife is owned by the grandson of Stuart Hamblen, Stuart was a country/folk musician and has a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, so it's a special piece. So far I lightly cleaned the leather and removed the thick layer of green tarnish that was on all of the brass, It was in REALLY bad shape when I received it so I had no other option.

So, the blade, you see that mess? What should I do?

 

[Bill DeShivs]

Bronze wool will remove much of the discoloration on the blade-as will 0000 steel wool-used gently.
The real problem would be trying to uniformly remove the engraving. Re-engraving it would not be a problem- as it's standard New Hermes diamond-drag engraving.