How to rescue a knife

This was knife found buried in the garden for God knows how long
After

We found this knife buried in the garden. When I say We it was actually my friend “Alana Williams”. She was digging a hole in the huge backyard to replant the ginger we had brought back from Dural.

I said we must try and resuscitate/ rescue this as I’ve done before so many times. The first step was to take off the old plastic bakelite kind of handle and I was able to use a chisel for that.

The next part of the puzzle was to find in my stash of wood ( mostly all recycled) a suitable piece to make a new handle.

once the wood was chosen then I cut it to the right size and marked a cross on the back to drill for the rat tail tang.

Cleaned blade and rat tail tang

Then I had to get a special extra long drill bit to be able to accommodate for the tang . Drill as straight as possible and check if it fits . Fill hole with epoxy and fit it up.

next was to shape the handle with my Shinto rasp and then sanding waxing and using burnishing oil