Restoring a Lost Cause - Part 2

To work on the back, it seemed right to clean it up first so I could see just what I had. A little time at the grinder with a deburring wheel to clean off the grunge was in order...

Once I got the back down to bare metal, it was over to the press to straighten it out. Here I'm using an arbor plate underneath and a thick chunk of steel on top to sandwich the back and allow me to close it up evenly:

The chunk of steel doesn't flatten the back uniformly across it's width - there's always a little bending involved, so one has to work the entire length of the back to get it straight. After about a half hour of messing around with it, I had the back straightened out:

That left the holes where the rivets were. They don't hurt anything functionally, but sure are an eyesore. I decided I would try fill them with a little silver solder. I started the process by cleaning out the hole as best I could with a rotary tool:

Then applied a silver solder using an oxy-acetylene torch, filling each hole as best as I could:

I tried to make sure the entire hole was filled, then filed away what was over and above the surface

When I was finished, I hit the thing with the deburring wheel - then cut and installed a new blade into the back. I do wish I had been able to use the original blade, but as I said I don't believe the one that was on it was the original anyway..

Here's what I ended up with:

You can still see the filled holes, but they look much better. The back is held in purely by tension of the closed back, and is quite secure... With that, it was on to the handle.

The handle had a chip out of the handle, and it was most uncomfortable. The only real way to fix it was to cut it off flush and add a new piece of wood to it, then shape it to match the original. I didn't have a piece of wood that would remotely match the existing handle - so being this entire project was taken on as a challenge, I thought I could make matching the existing with what wood I had on-hand and see how well I could do with it. I glued a piece of cherry onto the tip:

After gluing it on, I shaped the horn with a saw, a couple of rasps and files, and some sandpaper, then I gave it a good look - ooh, I thought maybe this was a mistake. The two woods look so very different:

I mixed up a devil's brew of leftover stains, and gave it a shot:

Time would tell if I was successful or not.

Up next - the finished product....