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Took too long - A Sugar Beet Knife by Clyde Cutlery Co.

My father had somehow/sometime acquired a few sugar beet knives. I was somehow able to secure a couple. This is the first of the two that I am trying to salvage.

This one has a straight blade and was made by Clyde Cutlery Co. The handle was loose and the steel pins were quite rusty. The blade itself was a rusted mess.

I removed the pins and handles then tried to clean up the blade while trying to preserve the storied history of the knife. While I had the handles off, I cleaned things up and slightly reshaped the handle to make it a little more ergonomic. I was only able to do so much with the rust stains in the wood from the old steel pins. When I went to re-attach the handle, I used an old standby material that will not rust (brass), yet still provide the mechanical connection the knife originally had.

Saving the original maker's stamp was very important to me, and I had spent a lot of time carefully filing and sanding the handle in a way to preserve the stamp.

As far as the blade goes? I chose to retain the rough surface finish for the main part of the blade but cleaned up the edge bevels to a much sleeker surface finish.

I do hope that you can enjoy the finished product of my efforts. Keeping the original components proved to be more difficult than replacing them for more aesthetically pleasing and modern materials.

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Permalink Reply by Lars Ray on August 5, 2023 at 21:11

Yea...but will it harvest any beets? :-)

Nicely done! As with most if not all of your restoration projects, this looks fabulous! You took a utilitarian tool and made it a hansome collectible. And the brass pins over steel really adds a nice touch.... OK, I'm envious.

Thanks for sharing not only your knife, but your handiwork too!

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Permalink Reply by Kevin D on August 5, 2023 at 22:01

The new edge is MUCH sharper than what was on it when I got a hold of it. The bevels yielded a nice new edge all by themselves. Then I went and added a touch of secondary bevel to produce a pretty nice edge. There is one chip in the edge that I could not remove where I think someone caught a rock with it sometime in years gone by.

One thing that I had never seen on a knife before was that freakish looking spike on the nose of it. Wicked looking!

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Permalink Reply by martyb on August 27, 2023 at 7:19

These do look great. I know what you mean about preserving makers marks and such. I have a couple old corn knives I did similar cleanup on. One is blade marked (middle of the blade) Rock River Co. Slightly faint to start with so I decided to only do a cleanup and repin on the handle. The other knife is unmarked and even rougher. Thanks for sharing those.