This man found a vintage pocket knife at an estate sale and decided to restore it to its former glory. The knife was covered in rust so removing the rust was first on the list of priorities. Then, he carefully removed some of the mechanisms of the knife and cleaned it up. He added a couple of wooden pieces to the handle of the knife to have a good grip and secured it with a pin. A final bit of polishing later, the knife looked as good as new.
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00:00In today's video I'm going to restore this pocket knife on the bottom. I was
00:03going to do both of them originally but then decided to scrap that idea as I ran
00:07into a couple of hiccups on the one that I did restore. So this thing was pretty
00:14rusty and not much was able to move freely. Even the key ring here was pretty
00:22tight.
00:25I'm just looking at this thing. It's probably a good idea for me to update my
00:30tetanus shot.
00:39I'm opening the wrong way there, Jim.
00:43So there was a good bit of pitting on the can opener but the other pieces did
00:56not have too much of a problem. Actually, I take that back. The key ring was kind of
01:02bad. So the first step here was taking it to the wire wheel to get off the big
01:09pieces of rust. Definitely get careful on the wire wheel. If you're not
01:15paying attention you can have it where the wire wheel will kick the blade onto
01:18your fingers. So certainly wear gloves. Here I ran out of my normal rust
01:25remover so I tried a new type. This is Rust-Oleum. It worked pretty
01:30well but it smells. I didn't care for the smell of it at all.
01:40I didn't really read the directions. I'm not sure how long they recommend you
01:43leave it in there but I left it in overnight so we'll call it a good 24
01:47hours. After letting it sit it did a very similar process as most of the rust
01:56removers where a lot of the rust turns black like this. Just give you an idea.
02:03You can see it kind of looks like tar but
02:09they're freed it upwards a little bit more easy. The parts open a little more
02:14easily and here this is a really bad way to do it. It's kind of a boneheaded move.
02:18You can kind of see that that blade could easily kick back if you're not
02:23paying attention.
02:27Once I got the big pieces on the outside I just took a really light brass wheel
02:33and got the inside and then when it's kind of picks to get down inside even
02:37further. It cleaned up pretty nicely and you can see that the brass is
02:46actually shiny gold now versus the kind of silver. The downside is once I got it
02:51all clean I realized that some of the rust had been holding together the
02:55broken spring here. That was a bummer. After doing all that work I realized
03:00that the spring was broken so I went online and ordered a replacement.
03:13So in order to get the other half of it you get my hand out of the way but you
03:18can see you have to grind off the pin that's holding it and then what I did
03:23was took a piece of scrap wood drilled a small hole so the pin when I knock it
03:27out will have somewhere to go.
03:48I'm not gonna lie I did have to stop the footage because it took me forever to
03:52pull this pin out. I made it look like it was a quick easy process but I should
03:57have driven it through a little bit further than I did.
04:11So once the pin was out I went ahead and took out the good spring too and then
04:15gave it a good cleaning which I did that off-camera. And while I was waiting on
04:22the Postal Service to deliver the replacement spring I tried out this
04:27chisel sharpener for the knife blade and it worked out okay. I didn't realize
04:33that I'd scrapped all the footage till later. So once the replacement spring
04:38came in just put the old pieces together on top of it and kind of outlined the
04:44shape. I couldn't find a spring that matched exactly so I bought one that was
04:48larger and then just ended up sanding it down.
05:00So here you can see I started with a chisel, excuse me not a chisel, but a file and
05:05mine are not exactly the best file so I scrapped that idea and switched it over
05:09to a an actual sand sander.
05:15So then I just got some scrap wood that I liked and it's going to use that for
05:22the blank. And I got some really aggressive sandpaper to make quick work
05:29of the excess wood and have it fit in there more nicely.
05:35And since I don't have a sander anymore I decided to put this sander in the vise
05:46and work on it that way. It works.
05:58So again this is really aggressive sandpaper so it's a quick trial and
06:02error where I would start and stop it and see how much it fit because it would
06:06take big chunks off if you're not paying attention.
06:14So once I got it to size I mixed up a little bit of epoxy and then attached
06:21the blank to the knife using that.
06:33And you do only want to do one side at a time and the reason is you won't know
06:39where the pin location is if you do both of them at the same time. So just do one
06:44side of the blank and then once it dries then drill a hole through.
06:51And here I just used finishing nails. I didn't have any brass rods or anything
07:06more sophisticated but this certainly serves its purpose.
07:15And I will say where I messed up along the way here is you should definitely if
07:20you've sharpened your blade cover it up with something. I didn't pay attention
07:24and left it open like that and ended up slicing my hand later and that was just
07:29a bonehead move on my part.
07:36Once I've got both sides on there went back to the sander and used it to get
07:42rid of the bulk of most of the material here.
07:50And this was a bad a bad effort here. So on the nail that I used I left too much
07:58exposed on both sides rather than get a little more fine-tuned and when I did
08:04having that much made it so the piece just split the wood. So then I had to go
08:13and get some other wood and try it again. So that was kind of a bummer so off
08:18camera I had to get rid of all the resin that had dried from the last block.
08:31So I repeated the same process with just a different type of wood.
08:39And then I'm hammering the nail so that way it'll make a rounded edge and it
08:44won't slip out.
08:48And then here after screwing up the first piece of wood that you saw on
09:07camera I did mess up another one so this is my third one and by this time I was
09:12being a little more cautious and taking my sweet time with the chisel but that's
09:17where I ended up cutting my finger. So anyway don't watch my videos for safety
09:25I think I've said it a couple of times now. Certainly do as I say not as I do.
09:35So here I ended up taking too much of a chunk with the chisel and then just took
09:41some of the shavings from when I was sanding earlier and some super glue it
09:45just patched it up a little bit. Then once that was finished I got the dremel
09:52and kind of fine-tuned it and now I've got the blade covered up.
10:02Once I got it all sanded down then took some acetone to get rid of all the
10:09residue but when you do you're gonna soak up all the oil out of the wood so
10:13it's not the best approach but what I did after that was just use some three
10:17in one oil to get through all the joints and then went ahead and lathered up the
10:22wood while I was at it. I've never done that before I don't know if it's a good
10:28idea or not but it worked for this piece. So after letting that sit for a little
10:33bit I covered up the wood pieces and then went over to the buffing wheel so
10:39that way I could make it shiny. Then came back and took some Murphy's wax for
10:47the wood portions and here's what it looks like. So again it's pretty shiny on
10:53the ends if I'd removed the key ring I probably could have made this other end
10:56a little more shiny but again this was a quick project since I hadn't done a
11:00video in a while due to work and painting my office and some other things
11:04that got me sidetracked. Here are some before and after photos. Thanks for
11:09watching.