Restored Draw Knife

[Daniel Kuehl]

I spent Halloween with the porch light turned off and the shop lights turned on. I have recently accumulated a number of old hand tools, some rusty....some very rusty. This draw knife is my first true restoration attempt. 

 

I forgot to take a "before" picture, but this knife was terribly rusty. I sort of doubted i would be able to actually restore it, but I wanted to attempt to anyways just for practice.

 

I cleaned it off with a brass brush first, just to knock the big chunks of crud off. The wing-nuts came off surprisingly easy. I soaked those overnight in vinegar....then forgot about them for three days. When I finally rinsed them off, they looked rust free, but dull and dirty. 

 

The metal ends of the handles and blade were treated with naval jelly for 15 minutes, then scrubbed off in a bucket of water with a brass wire brush. Then I repeated the process. Here is a pic of how it looked at this point:

 

 

 

The next step in the process was to spray it down with WD40 and sand with 150 grit wet/dry sandpaper. This took a lot of the really stubborn rust off and brightened the clear metal. 

 

 

 

I also sprayed the wood handles with WD40 and rubbed the excess off with a rag. Then reattached them with the cleaned up wing-nuts.

 

 

The whole process was pretty simple and amazingly effective. The knife was also quite sharp after restoration, but it could still use a good honing. 

[wdwerker]

Looks great!

I use a Scotch Brite pad to polish the surface up a bit, red then gray and finish with the white ones. I keep pads used on metal in a separate zip lock to prevent them from being used on wood or finishes because they will leave black marks.

[G S Haydon]

Nice one Daniel, look forward to seeing your other restored tools.

[Daniel Kuehl]

Thanks guys!

 

I'm looking forward to getting these grand old tools back to work! I also have another interesting looking tool that I can't identify...I think I'll post a picture of it later on tonight.