
The leather washers that remained looked to be in good shape and I thought at first to replace the missing leather with either more leather washers and dye them to match or adding a spacer material. I held the knife firmly in one hand and applied a little twist pressure to see how tight the washer wear and several literally crumbled. very rotten leather. As you can see the scale rust under the leather was bad.

I cleaned it up a bit and will clean it up further before adding a new handle.

Now time to choose handle material. I thought about all new leather...boring. Wood? I dislike wood scales and handles for the most part...has to be really different to interest me. Stag? Why yes, stag would be nice. I now have this Sambar stag roll on the way.

The blade itself is in excellent condition and the sheath is very usable. More when the stag arrives.