In this video, I restore an old knife. I found the knife in my Grandmother's garage. She said it belonged to her father, and can remember him using it as a kitchen knife. It was covered in a pretty heavy layer of rust and the scales (wood handle) needed to be replaced. I have no idea how old it is and could not find any identifying marks.
I used muriatic acid diluted with water to help get the rust off. Muriatic acid is pretty strong stuff and I definitely don't recommend using it as a rust remover unless you know what you're doing around acids and also have the proper safety equipment.
As you can see in the end of the video, some of the pitting in the blade was too deep to grind away without making the blade too thin. So I just left them as beauty marks. :-)
The new scales are made of spalted curly maple. The spalting (black lines) is caused by different colonies of fungus that infiltrate the wood after the tree dies. The wood comes from a maple tree that was cut down in my backyard several years ago. It has been drying for about 3 years now.
Thanks for watching!
-Ryan