Ebbtide
How'd you get the Western W49 so clean? I've scotchbrited mine for hours and hours and it looks like a million criss-crossed lines on the blade. I'd be interested in having mine cleaned up professionally if that's what you did. I don't understand why the blade has tape on it either "before the operation?"
It's beautiful.
:thumbup:
Everything was done by hand.
The trick to getting a clean finish (well, for us amateurs) is to have all the 'scratches' going in the same direction.
I backed a strip of scotch bright pad with a popsicle stick and worked it from the plunge (guard area) to the tip. Only in that one direction.
But! Before using the SB pad I did the same single direction sanding with 220 & 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper.
Only move up to the next grit when the scratches from the previous are gone. I kept everything wet with WD40.
One could just keep going finer in the grits up to 2000, but I figured this will be a piece of cake to clean up with a SB pad when I want to.
That blade is probably taped for safety reasons. Grinding the spine down on a live sharpened blade can be extremely hazardous to your health unless the edge is taped off.
I taped the blade to protect both of us. Me from the knife and the knife from the jaws of the vice.
I took the spine down to the blue line with a file.
Not a quick job
Then again, neither was sewing the sheath... that took about an hour and a half
Oh yeah, my buddy, Bruce Evans has a fantastic tutorial page on his website...
http://beknives1.homestead.com/beknives5.html
Check out the hand sanding tutorial there.
:thumbup:
Thanx for all the nice comments.