Restoring a Vintage French Opinel Folding Knife!

Hello everyone!!

Today I will show you how I restored a vintage French Opinel folding knife!

It's a really easy project and is very rewarding!

Supplies

Supplies:

• masking tape
• 180 grit sandpaper (120 will also work, it just depends on how smooth you want the finished product to be)
• 400 grit sandpaper (optional)
• linseed oil (optional)

Tools:

• razor scraper
• utility knife
• belt grinder (optional, depends on how much the blade needs shaped)

Step 1: Finding a Good Knife to Restore

I found this particular knife in a bin of old tools at our property, but pawn shops and old antique shops are a great place to find good quality knives!

To check whether a knife is worth restoring I first see where it is made and if it is a notable brand, and then I check how good quality the blade is!

You want to stay away from blades that are badly broken or pitted.

Step 2: Preparing the Knife

I cut a strip of cardboard to wrap around the blade to protect against accidents and then wrapped masking tape around the cardboard to hold that in place!

I suggest masking the locking mechanism so that during the sanding process, so it doesn't get scratched.

(I didn't think about masking it and lightly scratched the surface)

Step 3: Stripping the Knife Handle

Its time to strip the handle!

Unfortunately I had to remove the "Opinel" logo in the process of stripping and sanding the handle to make sure everything was smooth, but it still has the "Opinel" stamp on the blade so I wasn't too worried about that.

I used a heat gun moving back and forth across the handle until the varnish begin to bubble, and then began to scrape the handle down to the bare wood.

You really don't need to hold the heat gun on it long and even if it doesn't quite bubble but only gets warm, it makes the scraping a lot easier.

I found that using a normal razor blade works quite well to fit inside the slot in the handle to make sure it gets fully scraped too.

Step 4: Sanding the Handle

Sanding the handle is a pretty straightforward process, only involving a little time and feel.

I started with 180 grit as the handle was pretty smooth to start and gradually worked up to 400.

Folding the sandpaper helps to thicken it up so that sanding in the gap is easier!

Step 5: Touching Up the Blade (optional)

I used a belt grinder to taper the broken tip of the blade to a point and then sharpened it to a nice edge!

Step 6: Finishing the Knife!

Now its time to finish the knife!

I went with 50/50 boiled linseed oil and acetone for the handle to keep the look of the original and am pretty happy with how it turned out!

I might touch up the blade a little more and experiment with blacking it, but that's for a future instuctable!

You can make your knife fully custom and use other oils and maybe even blacken the handle with a torch if you want!

Thanks for reading!