[Larry Lim]

Hi,

Juz within 3 weeks of putting my brand new Windlass Persian Scimitar inside its hard leather scabbard, it develops stubborn pecks of rust. Out of desperate attempts & pure ignorance, I use a 400 grit sandpaper with WD40 as lubricant to try to take them out, but as a result, causes some ugly scratch marks the high carbon steel blade :-(

Are there any ways to take out the scratch marks & restore the polish as much as possible? The scratch marks ain't a lot but they stick out like sore thumbs because they're near the guard :-(

Pls help, someone!! Many thanks.

Larry

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Hi Larry,

This featured article should be of some help :
http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_care.html

Regards

[Chad Arnow]

Larry,
As noted in the article, most Windlass blades are covered with a clear lacquer. It's possible you've scrubbed the lacquer off where the rust was. If that's the case, you'll probably need to remove it from the rest of the blade to even out the finish. I'd work your way up in sandpaper grit to get an even finish (do the whole blade at 400, then step up to a finer finish).

[Larry Lim]

Many thanks, Chad. It'll be quite a task for 'amateur' me to even out the entire blade with sandpaper :-( Shall try my hands on a cheaper blade 1st. The other thing is getting finer grade sandpaper of 1000 and above.. don't seems to find them around my neighbourhood DIY stores :-(

Pardon my ignorance.... since Windlass blades are covered with a clear lacquer layer, how come it'll still get rust attacks by the scabbard .. *juz curious* ... And is there really NO ways to house any blades inside leather scabbard for long time?

Larry

[Anton de Vries]

I agree with Chad.

Don't give up too soon.
Once the lacquer is gone (which should happen very quickly...) even the use of grit 400 should result in an almost-mirror finish.
Just keep sanding in one direction. Deviations will stand out.

[Chad Arnow]

[Sean Flynt]

Sounds lacquered. Scratches on a such a blade look much worse than they are. You may not have scratched the steel at all, in fact. Get rid of the lacquer, display the weapon beside the scabbard, and accept that everything put together falls apart. Renaissance Wax helps, but you'll still have to periodically clean the weapon, treat rust spots and rewax. Personally, I like the look of a two-tiered, Japanese-style display of weapon and scabbard when the scabbard is of good quality.

By the way, getting rid of the lacquer will dramatically improve the look of your weapon. I have yet to see an MRL blade that didn't look better with a satin finish.

One other technical note: If you use a sanding sponge, you'll find that it gives a progressively finer polish as it wears out. Paper tends to fall apart before it loses much of its initial surface, but the sponge just finally turns into a mildly-rough foam block. Then you go to steel wool if you want a bright polish. The sponge usually gets me pretty close to the satin finish I prefer.

My new Windlass/MRL estoc has bright fittings, as usual, but I noticed a spot of rust on the quillons. That's a good sign because I've often found that MRL's hilt fittings are of a steel much more rust-resistant than the blade. Maybe they're moving away from that. If so, we'll have a much easier time creating a more attractive finish.

[Hank Reinhardt]

Let me add some comments here, especially since I have just finished redoing a cutlass to my own taste.
Windlass uses some of the toughest lacquer I have ever run across. I used some very powereful strip-eze, and put coat after coat on it, and I still had to use the buffing wheel with 240 grit to take the damn stuff off. They do it so that they can be shipped without rusting. Personally I hate the stuff, and would prefedr to let me sword age and darken rather the always look brand new. The are also careless, and often a bit of moisture will get under the lacquer and rust. there isn't much that camn be done about that. It pits very quickly underthose circumstances. Not having seen the sword, I can't say for sure,. but you may not have scratched the blade. Try and find some really strong paint and lacquer stripper, and once you peel it off, you may have a normal steel polish. If you were close by, I could look at it and tell you, but alas, we are all only as close as the Internet.

[Jean Thibodeau]

I hate lacquer also and it didn't take that long to sand it away using an abrasive sponge. The only problem I could see would be with a blade with small hard to reach corners in complex fullers or with engraved inscriptions or some other complex geometry. I would also use as fine a grit as possible to remove the lacquers to avoid rounding any crisp bevels or crisp edges of fullers.

With my Anelace dagger it took about an hour of work to get down to metal. If you want to check if you have any lacquer left on the blade you could use gun blue: What doesn't turn blue still has some lacquer on it, removing the blue should be easy unless you want a blued blade. The various salt, vinegar, lemon juice or mustard treatments can be then used to age the blade to various degrees.

Oh, nice to see you posting again Hank: Always a pleasure reading your comments.