Macchina
Gold Member
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2006
- Messages
- 5,213
So, my wife goes to our cabin last night because she had today off of work: leaving me at home to get into trouble. And trouble I did get into!
I was sitting at my desk doing some sharpening, fondling, flipping, etc. when my Sage 2 started to really bother me. You see, it came to me with some awful tooling marks on the scale relief (something I've seen on other Sage 2's as well). It's been in my EDC rotation for over a year and it never bothered me as much as it did last night. I considered sending it in, but then I got the great idea to sand it out myself (it was late and I was a little disillusion)! In anticipation of this awesome looking fix-it job I was about to start, I took some before pictures:
So I start on it with the 200 grit. It took about 30 seconds before it hit me: THE SCALES ARE SANDBLASTED! I don't know why I saw it in my mind that the sanded finish would blend in perfectly, but like I said before: it was late. So I continue sanding because the only thing worse than tooling marks is half-sanded tooling marks. So I get it all smooth, but in the process I had scratched up the scale above the relief and the finish was awful compared to the sandblasted part. Putting duct tape on the scale would have been an improvement. I tried buffing it, but the high-gloss contrast didn't look right at all against the clean lines of the knife and due to the scratching there was no clear line to stop buffing so I had to leave some scratches. I should have taken some pictures of the nasty thing, but instead I went to bed all bummed with no intentions of telling anyone what I had done.
Today I roll out of bed and head off to work. Ironically there were storm clouds above my head (literally) to accent the glum mood I was in. I decided to bring my Sage to work to see if I could improve it at all (I work in a machine shop). Break time rolls around and I head out to the sand blaster. I've tried sand blasting titanium before and it NEVER goes well. We have a pretty crappy sand blaster setup at work and it never does titanium evenly or heavy enough to cover up much of anything. Well as luck would have it (due to the storm) there was water in the air lines and as started blasting scale all I could see was mud. I blasted blindly for about a minute and pulled out the scale, expecting to see an even worse finish than when I started. Low and behold: The scale was perfect! I don't know if it was the water in the lines or if somebody cleaned out the sand blaster hose, but it worked like a charm! Perfectly matched texture from one scale to the other and if I may say so myself, the repair job looked perfect! It has a nice flowing filleted curve to it now that it lacked from the factory. So now I am very happy I started the fix-it late last night. My judgement may have been off initially, but it turned out to be one of those customization jobs that makes you like the knife even more because of it's personality.
I was sitting at my desk doing some sharpening, fondling, flipping, etc. when my Sage 2 started to really bother me. You see, it came to me with some awful tooling marks on the scale relief (something I've seen on other Sage 2's as well). It's been in my EDC rotation for over a year and it never bothered me as much as it did last night. I considered sending it in, but then I got the great idea to sand it out myself (it was late and I was a little disillusion)! In anticipation of this awesome looking fix-it job I was about to start, I took some before pictures:
So I start on it with the 200 grit. It took about 30 seconds before it hit me: THE SCALES ARE SANDBLASTED! I don't know why I saw it in my mind that the sanded finish would blend in perfectly, but like I said before: it was late. So I continue sanding because the only thing worse than tooling marks is half-sanded tooling marks. So I get it all smooth, but in the process I had scratched up the scale above the relief and the finish was awful compared to the sandblasted part. Putting duct tape on the scale would have been an improvement. I tried buffing it, but the high-gloss contrast didn't look right at all against the clean lines of the knife and due to the scratching there was no clear line to stop buffing so I had to leave some scratches. I should have taken some pictures of the nasty thing, but instead I went to bed all bummed with no intentions of telling anyone what I had done.
Today I roll out of bed and head off to work. Ironically there were storm clouds above my head (literally) to accent the glum mood I was in. I decided to bring my Sage to work to see if I could improve it at all (I work in a machine shop). Break time rolls around and I head out to the sand blaster. I've tried sand blasting titanium before and it NEVER goes well. We have a pretty crappy sand blaster setup at work and it never does titanium evenly or heavy enough to cover up much of anything. Well as luck would have it (due to the storm) there was water in the air lines and as started blasting scale all I could see was mud. I blasted blindly for about a minute and pulled out the scale, expecting to see an even worse finish than when I started. Low and behold: The scale was perfect! I don't know if it was the water in the lines or if somebody cleaned out the sand blaster hose, but it worked like a charm! Perfectly matched texture from one scale to the other and if I may say so myself, the repair job looked perfect! It has a nice flowing filleted curve to it now that it lacked from the factory. So now I am very happy I started the fix-it late last night. My judgement may have been off initially, but it turned out to be one of those customization jobs that makes you like the knife even more because of it's personality.
