A few weeks ago, I attended the annual Melbourne Pen Show, the oldest continuous collector’s and dealer’s fair of writing equipment, writing accessories and antiques in the southern hemisphere. This year was our 20th anniversary!

I sold quite a few things at the show – not just pens, but also silverware and antiques. Eager to see what else was on offer, I left a friend to guard my sales table, and went off to have a look around. Ironically, for something labeled as a pen show, I didn’t find any pens which excited me enough, in a price-range I was comfortable with, to actually buy. But while poking around through all the related offerings of inkwells, ink bottles, leathergoods, diaries, desk accessories and assorted antiques, I did find a row of rather crusty old pocketknives.

None of them were particularly appealing, but after sifting through all the detritus, I came across a rather handsome specimen with nickel-silver bolsters, and clad all over in lovely shimmering, glossy mother of pearl scales. Like all the other knives, this one was crusted and grimy and dare I say it, rather overpriced, but I perceived that, with a bit of effort, it could be turned into something both elegant, and useful.

A good bit of haggling managed to chip the price down and I bought it feeling happy for myself. Within just a few minutes of walking off with it and settling back behind my own sales table at the fair, I whipped out the knife and started thinking over what would need to be done to the knife to restore it to something resembling working condition…because it certainly wasn’t!

The knife was a standard, palm-sized slipjoint penknife, somewhat on the smaller end of medium, with two opposing blades contained within a pair of brass liners and a single backspring underneath, ornamented with nickel-silver bolsters and thick slabs of mother of pearl between, on either side. It could be a very attractive knife – if only the blades would open without ripping your fingernails out by the roots, and could cut anything worth a damn, without giving you tetanus at the same time, from all the surface-rust on the steel.

Who made the Knife?

The knife was manufactured in the capital of European cutlery – the German town of Solingen – by the centuries old firm of Wusthof. Established in 1814, the Wusthof cutlery firm is still owned and operated by the Wusthof family, over two centuries after it was founded! Although more famous today for making kitchen-knives, it was common in the old days for cutlers to make all kinds of blades from scissors to razors, pocket-knives to silverware. Specialising in one particular type of blade (like what most companies do now) is a relatively recent phenomenon. Being a Solingen knife, I knew I’d bought something of unquestioned quality – it would have to be, if the company’s still family-run after 200 years!

Cleaning, cleaning, and…more cleaning

In my many years of collecting and tinkering with antiques, it’s long been my experience that the vast majority of antiques that are purchased from someplace – be it a fair, online, at an antiques shop, or from someone’s barn in the middle of nowhere – only require ‘restoration’ or ‘repairs’, and are ‘broken’ or ‘don’t work’ – not because they ARE broken, or don’t work, but rather, because they simply haven’t been cleaned. In decades!

Watches, clocks, sewing machines, typewriters, fountain pens, cars, record-players…anything, really…that’s been used rough and put away wet, as they say…will tend to seize up and not work after several years of use and absolutely no maintenance. The same goes for pocketknives.

Once I got the knife home, I opened it up and flooded it with oil. I stuffed it full of tissue-paper and started rubbing and scraping away at the inside of the knife. Even this half-hearted attempt at cleaning the knife yielded amazing…and…frankly…revolting…results! After their brief spelunk into the dark cavities of the knife, the tissues returned to the surfaceworld clagged up and caked in filth! Black, brown, sludgy GUNK all over!

Now came the really messy bit…removing all this grime.

Working out the Grime

Unless you have all the right tools, removing 60 years of encrusted grime and gunk (the accumulated decades of dust, pocket-lint, dead skin, coagulated oil and god knows what else) from the inside of a pocketknife can be a long, slow, sticky, oily and very, very, VERY messy process. Most people don’t have these tools…like me…and so you gotta restore the knife without them, the long way around…and this can take days.

The only way to do this is to repeatedly flood the knife with oil (I suggest sewing machine oil, but if you can stand the smell, WD-40 works as well, but keep in mind, you will be using a LOT of it, so best to get a lubricant that doesn’t smell…) and then work the blades open and shut, over and over and over again.

The oil seeps into the deepest nooks and crannies of the knife and dilutes the grime and crud that’s stuck inside the springs, pivots and liners. Opening and closing the knife the literally thousands of times that this will require, works the grime loose and it seeps out the bottom of the knife through the backspring with each working of the blades.

Get some tissues, paper-towels or toilet-paper. Fold it thick and lay it on a hard surface like a tabletop. Rub the knife – spring-side down – against the paper. Press it hard into the paper and rub it vigorously back and forth. The capillary action of the oil seeping out of the knife into the paper draws out all the grime stuck inside the springs and pivots. Now lift up the knife and stare in horror and revulsion at the THICK BLACK GREASY LINES on the paper. This is the grime that’s inside the knife which you MUST remove if the knife is to work properly.

“But this takes DAYS!!” I hear you say. “Can’t you just lubricate the pivots and have done with it!?”

Sure. You can. But you’re only lubricating the grime that’s stuck inside the knife. Once the oil dries up, the grime dries up, sticks to the springs and pivots all over again, and turns to glue. It fuses the blades shut through sheer friction and you’re back to square one all over again. The only way to get the knife working properly is to get ALL that crud out. And the only way to do that is to flush it through with oil.

“Can’t you speed it up somehow?”

Not unless you can rip the knife apart, clean it, and then competently put it back together. Using an ultrasonic cleaner does help somewhat, but it’s only effective once the grime has already been loosened. Ultrasonic cleaners work by vibrating and generating thousands of tiny bubbles that burst and explode against anything they come in contact with (like a knife placed inside an ultrasonic bath).

These thousands of explosions flush out and dislodge any grime and gunk they come into contact with. But it only works if the bubbles can reach the grime – in this case, the grime is trapped deep inside the knife. For the cleaner to be effective, you need to work the grime loose, first.

The knife is clean once all this grime has been removed from all the pivot points, gullies, crevices and chokepoints inside the spring mechanism. When the oil coming out of the knife is clear (or as clear as you can get it), and the blades swing open and shut smoothly with little (if any) resistance, then the knife is clean. If the blades keep jerking open and shut, then it needs more cleaning. You do not want jerky, unpredictable blades in your pocketknife AFTER you’ve sharpened those same blades – they become a serious safety risk!

Removing the Chip

As elegant as the knife was (or as elegant as I perceived it would be, after I was done with it), there was no hiding the fact that the blade had a tiny, but noticeable chip along its length. It was a tiny chip – probably less than a millimeter, but it was a chip, nonetheless, and I knew that it would be pointless to try and sharpen or use the knife if the chip wasn’t dealt with. The chip is a weak-spot in the blade, but it’s also an annoyance and a safety risk. And it prevents you from cutting anything properly, since you don’t have a straight, clean edge.

The only way to remove the chip was to grind the blade down to the same level as the end of the chip. That’s right – you have to physically remove metal from the blade. Obviously, the bigger the chip, the more metal you have to remove, so ideally, any knives you buy should have no chips at all, or if they do, then they should be tiny chips like this, where grinding down the blade doesn’t affect it so badly.

Out came the sharpening stones!

I picked out the roughest sharpening stone I had. I laid it down and started grinding the blade back and forth, heel to toe along the stone in a sawing or slicing action. The aim was to slowly grind down the metal until the edge of the blade met the top of the chip, thereby eliminating it. Obviously to do this well, the blade needs to be level on the grinding stone, or else you end up with a wonky-looking blade. So if you do have to do this, make sure the blade’s edge is level against the stone as you grind. Stop every few strokes to check progress and stop grinding entirely when the chip is ALMOST gone.

Once you reach that stage, regular sharpening of the now dulled knife-edge should remove the rest of the chip and restore the blade to its proper profile.

Keep in mind that, because the only way to remove a chip or nick in the blade is to remove the metal around the chip, smaller chips are easier to remove from blades than larger chips. A knife with a big chips in the blade should generally be avoided.

Polishing the Blades

Knives which are this old are typically made of carbon steel. That means that they’re very susceptible to rusting. Back in the old days, the way to stop this was to give the blades a protective coating. 60 or 70 years ago or more, this was accomplished by plating the blades in a non-corrosive metal…like nickel. Nickel not only gave the knife a sheeny silver shine, but it also prevented the blades and other steel parts of the knife from corroding.

50, 70, 100 years later, and all that nickel-plating is gone. The blades will probably be growing rust and starting to pit, by now. Heavy rusting and pitting on blades should be red-alert signs that the knife is not to be touched, let alone purchased, but light surface rust can generally be removed by careful polishing.

To do this, you’ll need fine-grit sandpaper of varying degrees of roughness, and a polishing compound of your choice (or if you don’t want to use a metal polish, the oil that you used to loosen out the grime inside the springs and pivots can also be used).

With enough persistence, and the right degrees of abrasiveness, a combination of fine sandpaper and a lubricating/polishing liquid can restore a knife’s blades to a stunning shine. If you really put effort into it, you can even get a glossy, mirror finish, but don’t forget that your main task is to remove the rust.

Sharpening the Blades

Once you’re done removing the grime from the springs and pivots and got the blades opening and closing smoothly, once you’ve removed any chips from the blades and have given them a good polish, the last step is to sharpen the blades. I always leave blade sharpening as the last step to prevent any nasty cuts during the cleaning process.

There’s a million articles on the internet about how to sharpen everything from corkscrews to axes, so I won’t go into the intricacies of the action, but I will say that a pocketknife has been sufficiently sharpened when you can slice cleanly through a sheet of paper or cardboard from point to shank, without the blade sticking to, or tearing up, the paper or card as it makes the cut.

Hold the edge of the sheet of paper or cardboard in the thumb and index finger of your left hand, three or four inches from the corner. Holding your knife in your right hand, slice downwards, from the edge of the paper ahead of your fingers, from one side of the sheet to the other. A sharp knife will cut cleanly into the edge of the paper, through the middle and down to the bottom, the whole length of the blade without stopping. You should be able to do this really fast. If the blade sticks, jams, catches or fails to cut in any way, or if it tears the paper in half while this happens, then it’s not sharp enough.

Once the blades have been thoroughly sharpened, then your knife is ready for use!

This is the process that I went through to restore this knife back to working condition. It was a long, drawn out process that took over a week (removing 60, 70 years of grime was never going to be easy!), but it was worth it. Now I have another beautiful vintage pocketknife to add to my collection.

Keeping it Clean and Sharp

Once you’ve finished the arduous task of restoring your pocketknife, it’s important to keep it in good condition. Don’t force the blades, always keep your knife dry, and every now and then (not often, once or twice a year should be enough, if you use it regularly), flush out the springs and pivots with oil again to keep the action smooth and free of grime. And don’t forget to sharpen it – ideally after any heavy use, if you feel that the blades are starting to lose their edges. Used correctly, a sharp knife is safer than a blunt one.