All About Pocket Knives

Hello, I picked up a couple knives the other day where the blades appear to have been belt sanded. They have those multiple horizontal lines going across the blades that are unpleasing to the eye. And certain spots where they went aggressive have an ugly glare like tin foil. I was wondering if anyone knows of a way to remove those? I will include a couple pictures to give an idea of what I am talking about, but I'm sure many of you have seen this. I would like to get the blades back to a natural finish. I like light sanding old blades that have rust to clean them up a bit, but also leave that old look to them.

Is there any way you could post a picture of the blades? Thanks.

John

Dont know if you saw Mikes post the other day but its certainly a good place to start: viewtopic.php?f=37&t=67154
Jeff

I will post a picture tonight. Didn't get around to it yesterday.

1967redrider wrote: ↑Thu Jun 25, 2020 4:57 pm Is there any way you could post a picture of the blades? Thanks.

John

I will check it out, thanks!

Jeffinn wrote: ↑Thu Jun 25, 2020 10:05 pm Dont know if you saw Mikes post the other day but its certainly a good place to start: viewtopic.php?f=37&t=67154
Jeff

It's hard to tell in the pictures, but this is what I mean:

Use finer grit sandpaper or emery cloth. And a good helping of elbow grease. It’s as simple as that.

Ken

Those lines look fairly deep, so to remove them completely you are going to lose a fair bit of metal, which it looks like that knife can hardly afford. Do what Ken said, with medium, then fine , then extra fine grits and you will at least be able to "tone down" the sanding lines to a more acceptable appearance. It's your knife, and you should do whatever returns it to a condition that you are happy with! P.S. - be careful not go get any of the sanding grit/debris inside of the knife and I suggest blowing it out with compressed air before you close the blade and get the grit into the pivot area.

I run into this a lot, it probably caused by someone using a bench grinder. The only way to remove those lines is with a finer belt grit and then a finer one. I use a Bader 2x72 belt sander starting with a 120 grit then go down to a 240 and etc. The only problem with that is you are going to remove a lot of metal and will end up with a rather thin blade. I'm sure most people here do not have access to a belt sander, so you will have to use a lot of elbow grease with a sanding block and some water or oil on the wet or dry paper of the proper grit. It can be done however, good luck, Terry

Thinking about your knife, I suspect there’s a lesson to be learned from it. Which is using the type of aggressive sharpening tool that was obviously used on it will yield that result - a knife with pre-maturely used up blades. With that amount of blade loss already, in its current condition the knife doesn’t have much value. Unless it just bothers you, I’d put it my pocket “as-is”, carry and use it. As others have pointed out, removing the scratches is just going to remove more metal from the already well-worn blades.

What I can see of the rest of the knife aside from the blades looks pretty good. If you like it and want to restore it you could watch for a donor knife having better blades but cracked or broken handle covers, get it for the blades to put into this knife. Or you could send it to Case Repair to have new blades put into it (they will be from current production however). The possibilities are many.

Ken