Restoring a Cattaraugus 225Q Knife from WWII

foreign [Music] to say catarau gas this is a catarragus 225q these knives were made for the US military during World War II by The cataraugus Cutlery Company out of Cattaraugus County New York these are often referred to as quartermaster knives or sometimes more dubiously as fighting knives not saying you couldn't do some good fighting with this knife but I don't imagine that was the the sole intended purpose when it was commissioned anyway these are not particularly rare or valuable so I thought it would be a good restoration candidate it's in pretty good shape really the blades in fantastic shape the handle is a little bit worse for wear and then the sheath the sheath is not original and it's not in very good condition I bought this knife for fourteen dollars on a local auction that seems to be kind of at the bottom end of their price range it probably would have been worth more if it had an original sheath good condition knives like this I've seen they're all less than 100 bucks so so yeah let's get to it pretty nice knife chunky six inch blade 150 millimeters four millimeters thick it's got a stacked leather handle there's some gravity in this guy it's probably too big and bulky to be you know to be much of a hunting knife but it would be a good camping knife or you know just a general purpose knife has this cool pommel with a waffle face I don't think you probably use it hammer or shell cracker or something interesting construction it has three pieces of Steel laminated together the middle piece is actually kind of a quarter turn that locks onto a tab or a slot in the Tang to hold the Stacked leather handle in place and then there's a couple of nails that hold the whole thing together yeah let's get it apart see if we can make a new handle for it clean up some of this corrosion and then I want to make a new sheath so the old boy I bought this knife from he was actually one of my shop teachers when I was a kid he was telling me some of the history said these knives were really popular they made I guess they made over a million of them and the problem with them was the the Stacked leather handle and the leather sheath they just disintegrated in the South Pacific because of the high humidity so even though they're not rare knives it's kind of rare to find one that has an original sheath I guess I'm thinking the best thing to do would be just to cut away a couple layers of the leather so this is plastic here or it's probably like Micarta I can see the the linen layers in it anyway there's the tip of the nail just poking through foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign there's piece one and then this guy turn like so foreign pretty brittle foreign this is kind of a cool feature so right here where the Tang meets The Wider part of the knife they've added a small radius just as a stress relief and then the guard here actually has an accommodation stamped into the slot to fit over that radius that's pretty cool on a cheaper knife they'd just have a sharp sharp edge right there and it's very prone to breaking I'm just using some WD-40 any kind of light oil will work and this is a Dye polishing Stone they're available from any company that sells machinist supplies master car is a good place to get them and be careful though because this knife is sharp here has they call it a false double edge something like that yeah this part's gonna take a while foreign I want to use this knife it's not just a wall hanger so it's going to end up with plenty of plenty of blemishes foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] I bought this kit [Applause] comes with these pre-cut leather discs the problem is the slot in the middle is a little bit too small so we're just going to elongate it a little bit using a punch if I don't drop them all I believe that'll work foreign of these stacked leather handle videos I've watched on YouTube is done the same way they take the leather pieces they slather them with some kind of two-part epoxy and they glue the whole thing together in a giant sticky nasty disgusting mess I'm not gonna do that here's a leather from the original handle there's not a speck of glue on this they put it together dry and it lasted 80 years good enough for them good enough for me so what we're gonna do we're just gonna dunk these in water so they're a little bit moist start stacking them up foreign I don't know I hope I didn't over compress the leather I put it in the arbor press and I really pushed on it the thing that's weird though is I was expecting to squeeze it down and then have it spring back but it really didn't do that in fact I can take these caps off and [Applause] the leather stays where it was [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] I'm just not happy with this handle I mean it worked but it didn't work it didn't work how I thought it was gonna work I thought I would compress the leather and then it would spring back and hold everything tight but the pommel is kind of loose and I tried soaking it in what did I use linseed oil and that didn't really work I mean the leather just soaks it soaks the stuff right up but it doesn't seem to expand yeah it's just not tight kind of wavy I don't like it so we're going to start over I got some new leather washers these are from USA knife maker and they're a little more substantial than the other ones I got I can't remember where I got the other ones anyway let's just do it never gonna be happy with it the way it is foreign [Music] yes I'm aware of the irony of putting a Vise in a vise but I wanted to have the smooth jaws of the drill press vise and the sturdy Mount of the bench vise so this is what you get foreign [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign I'm pretty happy with that yeah I'm glad we redid it it worked a whole lot better the second time except I just got a grease stain on it yeah the Contours are pretty close to what we you know what we sketched out here it's a little bit more hourglass shaped than it was before I think that's a good thing it's also a little bit gentler curve right here so worst case scenario if I don't like it I can always grind it down a little further well I'm probably going to regret this but we're gonna try it foreign foreign [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Applause] position [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] this is a landscape sharpening system foreign we're gonna set it up for 25 degrees it's pretty good general purpose Cutting Edge this is the medium Stone I don't think we need the coarse Stone this Edge is still in pretty good shape as we have a problem here so we'll just move the Knife Down foreign so I like to just kind of hold pressure here sort of midway between the guide and the blade [Laughter] foreign so satisfying [Music] foreign [Music] what's amazing to me about these knives is that so many survived yeah it's true for a lot of World War II gear it's amazing that there's so much of it still around because it really wasn't designed for longevity you know it had to do a job but beyond that it was mostly about banging them out as fast as possible you know cat or August never set out to make a to make an heirloom knife and you can see it all over you know the bevels are kind of uneven where the catarragus kind of logo here is stamped it's pretty uneven and then you know the whole design of this pommel you know it's just you wouldn't build a knife like this for yourself at least I wouldn't and if you look at the like Bark River has a reproduction of this knife they change the pommel to be a one piece with a nut that you can thread on and that's way better or the like the k-bar design would be better where it's a single piece that's pressed on and then a pin goes through but you know this is easy to produce it's three pieces of thin Stamped Out Steel anyway thanks for watching it's my first kind of restoration video so let me know what you think yeah on to the next project

Channel: Watch Wes Wing It

Views: 134,959

Keywords:

Id: JtswG-IzuN8

Length: 27min 53sec (1673 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 01 2023