Fairburn Sykes redo
Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2019 11:44 pm
I posted a picture of this knife a few days ago in another thread. I learned that although it's a J. Norwill & Sons, Sheffield, it is of later manufacture and not a collectable variety of the Sykes Fairburn. The grip had a heavy coat of kahki paint on it and you couldn't see any marks on the grip as a result. I removed the paint down to bare metal on the grip, nut and guard. I made some ferric chloride to blacken the zinc grip and heated up both nut and guard with a torch (they are steel) and applied linseed oil to blacken them. It looks so much better than it did painted and it was fun to do. Now I've got plans for a crossdraw leather sheath.