So this mate of mine brought an old family heirloom knife to me for restoration.
The knife certainly have seen better days.. among other, the main things are
- the spine is folded due to some hammering (could be when the user try to chop through bone etc)
- the sides of the blade are badly pitted due to corrosion
- the dark patina, although is beautiful, I suspect it is full of blood and flesh bits that accumulated over the years (century?) of use
- the handle is loose and were being wedged back with a bit of newspaper.
There is no reference in the net as to the actual age of the knife, however I & H Sorby mark has been used since 1822, so for all I know this knife could have been 180 years old.
So, I started by removing the handle and then grinding off the folded metal spine which is the worse part of the blade in its original state... sorry no photos here..
Once I removed the deformity, I then buff off the dark patina on the side of the blade..
Here I noticed some lines along the cutting edge and the fact that the surface of the side of the knife is full of ridges like folded steel in a damascus blade..
So.. I raise the pattern by etching it.. and hoooleeee ....
It is indeed folded metal..
The it hits me.. it is wrought iron blade with an insert of hardened high carbon steel for the cutting edge.
This fact is accentuated by the dark etched result on the cutting edge. High carbon steel would color to black when patina is forced be acid.
It is indeed a beautiful blade with very pleasing damascus like patterning
I notice that the handle is also quite beautiful, although it is full of cracks, so I ended up restoring the timber handle (oak?) by rough sanding the bulk and then impregnating it with resin and re construct the pieces together... sorry again no picture..
It does look good on the assembly.
I then peen the end of the blade over a washer made of a 5c coin for retainer - it is illegal to disfigure a current currency coin so I wont post the photo of this
Anyhow here is the final look of the blade, I am quite happy with it..
So there..
Thanks for looking