restore

…the sharpener called grenade, not a real grenade.

Or should that be ‘How not to restore a grenade’? – you’ll see why.

The age and the name of this sharpener even fit with the current 100th anniversary of Britain’s involvement in WWI, which is being commemorated on a national and on a local level – with local museums and libraries in and around Preston (where I live) taking part.

The grenade sharpener design has been around since 1847 ^[1]see Lexikaliker: Granate and is still being sold today. I got a modern one, which Lexikaliker got me five years ago when I wasn’t able to get one in the UK.

Cleaning

A few days ago I also got my hands on an old version – I was lucky enough to get one for a good price.

First task: clean it. I bought the metal polish used during a previous trip to Germany, after a tip from Lexikaliker on how to clean old brass.

Problem

Unfortunately something went quite wrong. There was a band of oxidisation after I left the sharpener in the metal polish over night. It now looks as if there’s a dent where this band was. Brass is missing in this dent, which is difficult to see on the photos, but quite obvious in reality.

I have two ideas as to what might have caused this.

1. The brass composition was different where this band /dent is, so the polish could ‘erode’ the material there. This explanation seems unlikely.
2. I shouldn’t have but the blade and the screw in the same polish. Maybe the metal somehow reacted with the polish which made it ‘corrode’ the brass.

Ok. I got to live with my mistake now, but if I ever get another chance I will keep the blade and screw separate.

Next problem: The blade. It seems slightly too short to cut into the wood. I’ll talk about that another time.