Old Sharpening Screwup

Joined
Mar 20, 2007
Messages
23
I've got an older 119 Special. It was one of the first real knives I ever had and I am very attached to it. About 5 years ago I was sharpening it with a wet stone (before I came to the realization that I cannot judge an angle well enough for this to be a good way for me to sharpen anything). The wet stone was rectangular and I didn't realize that every time I drug the blade off of the edge the corner of the stone was running along the side of the blade. I did this on both sides before I realized that the lines on the blade weren't left over moisture from the oil but actually small valleys I had etched into the metal.

The knife is still in excellent condition (I use a sharpening tool now) but those etched lines still haunt me. Is there any way that I could buff the entire surface to make the lines less noticeable or maybe somewhere I could take it or send it off to that would refinish the metal? I want to get info from people who know what they are doing before I screw up the poor gal even further.
 
Depending on how deep they are, you should be able to work them out with some coarse sandpaper and then slowly progress up through the grits to get your desired final finish. Could even take it up to 1500 or 2000 grit and then hit it with some metal polish to get a mirror finish if you wanted. I gotta do this to my Native one of these days, but with all the weird angles I'm worried it won't come out good...
 
I guess I got some work ahead of me tonight. That's ok. A labor of love.

Thanks for the advice. I always pop my head into the forums for info and decided to finally register. I'm glad I did.
 
Back
Top