[Regia-NA] Reworking an ancient/medieval blade

[rmhowe]

A while back I mentioned that I sometimes stoned/honed old
[generally modern] blades to eliminate all the rust and
restore them a bit. Here is one I recently bought.
I have no pictures of the blade after I have worked on it
but you can see what I began with:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7330505671

Total cost was $15 with tax in this state.

The blade was forge laminated steel as it turned out.
There are a number of areas where the steel never
quite welded completely together.  But then I
have seen the same little fracture lines in Japanese
wakisashi I have. I'm not quite done with it.
The iron ring for example still needs careful work.
Then I will gradually polish the remainder.

Curiously it has three yellow metal dots
piercing the thickness of the blade
on it forming an equilateral upside down triangle,
above the forward curve of the blade edge.
Each is about 1/8" in diameter and can be seen
as light whiter spots in the rust. I presume this
is the maker's mark, or a sign of quality. Since
I couldn't see them beforehand I was rather surprised
at this when they emerged from the rust.

The rust is a bit deeper than I originally thought
in some places, so I will end up with a blade with
some pits in it. I could stone them out enough to
eliminate them but it would really weaken the blade.
I have considered painting the best areas with
asphaltum or paint and placing it in a beaker with
some form of iron to replate the pits until they fill.
Not quite sure of what form of iron powder to use in
solution.

In this case I used diamond primarily in the form of
small hones and large whetstones. Since these don't
go into depressions easily I am using some form of
stone that looks like aluminum oxide but wears quickly
to get into the lower areas.

The edge had to be taken back from 1/32 to nearly 1/16th
inch to achieve an edge without rust nicks clean through
the blade. It appears it will be sharp enough to
shave hair eventually. It is close to that now.
It will shave hair to a limited extent on the back of my
hand now.

I'm still working on some dark areas on the blade
in places so I haven't gone to a fine finish yet.

It won't come out as pretty as the medieval greek/cyrillic
etched logoed knife but it may prove useful. At any rate
I will eventually rehandle both of them. A whittle tang
knife and a hanging folding knife. For a while at least
the rust is stopped in its advance on the metal. At some
point I will try the electrolitic methods of rust removal
but that wasn't the point with this one. Seeing if I could
return it to a useful and display condition was.

The thickness of the back on both of these is a bit over
1/8 inch. This one simply had deeper pits than the other.
This still leaves me over a dozen nice rusty ones from
a large period of medieval/renaissance times.

If you decide to try this don't buy from Elkins Coins
and Antiquities. You may find you've paid for something
you will Never Receive. I have. Paid for insurance too.
Never a response out of him, but Paypal did drop him.  ;)

"They didn't make knives like that then did they?"

"Well, yes they did. You're holding an original blade."

I know one dealer locally who had a tub full of them
last April at the RenFaire here. Somewhere around 100.

Magnus