Have you ever wondered how to repair and restore a rare vintage rusty corroded knife? Are you interested in learning how to create knife scales from scratch? In this week's repair and restoration video, I rebuild and restore a 90 year old vintage unique mini hatchet knife axe combination tool manufactured by the Imperial Knife Company.
There were a lot of steps to the restoration of this unusual tool. Because the handle was missing, there was significant build-up of corrosion on the exposed brass liners which needed to be scraped off and cleaned before degreasing and rust removal. Due to the amount of pitting on both the brass and steel parts, the entire knife was disassembled in order to repair each part separately.
The hatchet axe blade was straightened, sanded, polished and sharpened by hand. The knife blade was pitted from rust so much that the pits could not be sanded out so I spot welded them carefully using a 1/16 inch rod and a low amp setting on the welder. I was able to fill most of the pits without ruining the blade but I did have to build a small forge with which I heat treated the knife.
After all of that, the steel parts were nickel plated and further polished. The brass bolsters were damaged during removal so I fabricated new ones from brass plate. The brass liners were cracked and corroded so I silver soldered the cracks and pits. The scales were missing so I fabricated new scales from the wood of an old oak tree that had beautiful spalting throughout the wood. I finished the handle with boiled linseed oil.
Timecodes:
00:00 Intro and initial scraping of loose corrosion
00:53 Cleaning rust and corrosion
01:49 Disassembly
02:36 Exploded view of knife
02:43 Rust removal and degreasing
03:26 Straightening, sanding, polishing the hatchet blade
04:14 Welding and sanding the knife blade
05:43 Building a forge
06:42 Heat treating the knife blade
07:14 Sanding and polishing the knife blade
07:36 Nickel plating the steel parts
08:08 Repairing the brass liners
08:22 Making new wood handles
10:10 Making new brass bolsters
10:51 Shaping the handle
11:59 Assembling the knife
12:46 Final shaping of the knife
13:25 Sharpening the knife blade
13:42 Final reveal
If you would like to try building a knife forge, here is a link to the fire bricks I used - amzn.to/3n1w7jY
If you purchase from this link, the channel will receive a small commission from the sale.
If you would like to watch another knife repair and restoration video, click here -- • 1970's Old Timer Knife...
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Cheers!