Vintage Sabatier

[Keith Sinclair]

Of coarse wanted to save Nugent handle on this vintage blade when I sanded it had cracks on both sides. I cleaned the gunk out with a sharp hook tool down to bare wood.
Used Premium ultra thin cyanoacrylate glue.it is very strong & free flowing as water. It gets a bad reputation because it must be handed with care because so free flowing & people have gotten fingers glued together. It's perfect option for cracks in old ebony handle. As soon put glue along cracks it would disappear into handle. You must wait before adding more glue. It took adding glue five times on one side & four times on other till got to handle surface level. So a fair amount of glue went to areas inside the handle. After sanded flush with surface. Looking at handle under magnification had grain micro cracks. Decided to use ebony wood filler. Put on a section of old cotton T shirt slightly damp. Then wiped over entire handle. Let dry couple days. Sanded to 320 grit.
Then put on 3 coats of 50/50 mix pure tung oil & clear bullseye shellac. oooo steel wool between coats. Then buffed.

 

[McMan]

That came out really well! I'm going to have to try that method. What specific type of CA glue was it?

 

[Keith Sinclair]

STRBOND Super fast Thin CA. Premium glue.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

If your interested in finish it works well to protect handles from the elements. I used Stefan Keller handles at work & they held up well. My yanagiba had ho handle cutting many platters of sashimi & blocking Ahi would have to clean fish from handle. Got a custom curly koa from Stefan easy to clean & finish protects wood. 50/50 pure tung oil & clear bullseye shellac. Mix in small squeeze bottle

 

[Keith Sinclair]

Took more off finger guard to make heel sharpening more user friendly. Sharpened it starting with 400 grit ended with 1K King hyper.
It's cuts paper, but not sharp enough. Think have to spend more time thinning with 400 grit just wanted to see what had with a quick sharpening.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

Did some serious thinning with the gesshin Xtra large 400. Worked it till had even burr heel to tip just thinning. Put on micro bevel with King 1K.

Now I have a sharp vintage Sabatier

 

[Benuser]

Very nice, but why stopping at 1k? They take and hold a highly polished edge. I maintain them on a 8k 'snow-white'.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

Well fell through broccoli, mushrooms, & cherry tomato this morning for omelet.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

Don't have a snow white have a kitayama tho.

 

[Ericfg]

Great restoration on that nogent handle!

What do we do about that tang hole at the butt? Just leave it as-is, or hide it?

 

[Keith Sinclair]

The handle is stable with no movement even before restoration. It's a hole but you can see end of tang never thought of it would be easy to hide with ebony wood filler now that you pointed it out. Was more interested in grinding down finger guard so could do proper heel sharpening. Still have to work that a little.

 

[Pertti]

50/50 pure tung oil & clear bullseye shellac. Mix in small squeeze bottle

Heyyy, very nice job and a beautiful Sab. I'm quite interested in trying this mix out now that I've seen this. How long does it need between coats? From discussions on forums I usually I see people putting one before the other, not mixing them it. You seem to have said it holds up well too right, thats great. I wouldn't leave my knives laying wet, but I read that shellac could turn whitish if one does, maybe that is also less of a concern with the mix?

I have used pure tung alone myself and like it a lot, but I can see from your work I could have used a filler too on my smaller nogents. I like them as is though also.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

Like I said used his handles at work, they would get dirty in busy kitchen, but you could buff them up again. The finish protects the wood.

Back when Stefan was living in Hawaii he was getting depressed because of job and a over load of unfinished handles. Plus he had a large Australian order, over whelmed. So I offered to help him get out of the weeds. Helped anyway could taking handles home sanding putting on finishing coats.

This is process 50/50 mix only need small amount for a handle. So small squeeze bottle good. Leave enough room to shake bottle because if sits awhile it will separate, a few shakes ready to use. Put dab on section of paper towel apply to handle wipe off extra. If trades are blowing will dry half a day turning handle. So a good day can put on two coats.
If it's raining can take more than a day between coats. Between coats rub dry handle with 0000 steel wool. Three coats is enough after last coat dry steel wool again. I use a horizonal buffing wheel on drill press. After buffed handle is finished. I've used this on ho wood handles & sayas keeps them from getting dirty easy to clean.

Make sure you get clear bullseye shellac NOT the amber.

Two tone wood saya for my thick 240mm Watanabe. Coated years ago.

 

[Pertti]

Very helpful, thank you @Keith Sinclair, I think I will try this. The saya looks fantastic.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

My pleasure someone likes his Sab's up there in Finland.

 

[Pertti]

Enough to have 5 more on the way haaahaha.

 

[picturepoet]

Two tone wood saya for my thick 240mm Watanabe. Coated years ago.

looks pretty good, was this an original one from Mr. Sin?

 

[Keith Sinclair]

Actually it was large size 240mm from CKTG.
Don't think they carry them anymore. For tall heel or thick spine gyuto's.

Best deals when getting saya for students knives was JCK from Japan shipping to Hawaii was cheap too.

 

[picturepoet]

thanks for the info, I'll take a look