Cleaning/Refurbishing Bayonets

[Jerhal]

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Here are some more showing the rust.

I'd love to have this cleaned up/restored, but only if it does not detract from it historically.

[Jerhal]

Dave,

The only markings on the Japanese knife are unreadable. There is one marking on each side at the top of the blade right before the cross piece. Attached are the best pictures I can take.

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[IditarodJoe]

Jerhal - About ten years ago, an article written by the head curator for museum at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site on preserving antique arms was posted on the NPS website. I believe the article has long since been taken down, but back then I did manage to save a copy of the text as a six-page MS Word document. The CSP email function doesn't appear to allow for attachments, but if you'd like to send me an email message through this site I'll email a copy back to you. (If any of you more experienced posters know how I could post it here for everyone's benefit, please let me know.)

This article is certainly not the final word on conserving antique arms, but it might be a good starting point for you.

[dave]

In first pics the handle appeared heavily rusted, second ones do not look so bad. The stamps on the knife are not clear enough to ID but they do not look to be jap of 1900's period.

[Jerhal]

Dave,
Thanks. Guess it will remain a mystery...

[jaie5070]

If the 1905 were mine I would try and remove the grips and then give the metal a LIGHT scrubbing with a green pad soaked in oil. You really have to work at it to ruin patina or any remaining finish with a fine green scrubby or fine bronze wool soaked in oil. Keep the oil of the wood if you can't remove them. Or if you are willing to work at it, build an apparatus to remove any rust by electrolysis. (Check youtube).

[PhillipM]

If the 1905 were mine I would try and remove the grips and then give the metal a LIGHT scrubbing with a green pad soaked in oil. You really have to work at it to ruin patina or any remaining finish with a fine green scrubby or fine bronze wool soaked in oil. Keep the oil of the wood if you can't remove them. Or if you are willing to work at it, build an apparatus to remove any rust by electrolysis. (Check youtube).

I wouldn't use electrolysis unless he could make a fixture to suspend the blade point down, but not immerse the factory bluing.

[1/501]

US M1905s and their variants take down easily. I understand your being hesitant to do so if you've never done it before. A drop of penetrating oil (Kroil is my favorite) on the head and exposed threads on the tip will loosed it. Make certain you use a screwdriver st from the hilt and grip frame using a piece of denim or other coarse cloth like burlap.

[Jerhal]

1/501,
I actually ordered some gun oil and very fine bronze wool today to try and clean the rust off myself. I'm going to carefully try it on a portion of the crossbar and if I do okay, I'll probably try and disassemble it to do the whole bayonet.

[Jerhal]

I just spent the last 6 or 7 hours working on this. I used some very fine steel wool lightly soaked in gun oil very lightly to know off the high rust. Then I used first a green scrubby pad and then fine bronze wool with gun oil. Whoever said (not here but at another site) that bronze wool does leave a residue was lying...

Despite the comment from jaie5070 about it being hard to hurt the patina, I think I might have. I think I might have confused rust with patina and scrubbed too much/too hard. But I think it looks a lot better than the rust.

Another friend said I ought to use a bronze brush on my Dremel to get even more off. But this scares me.

Where do you guys think I'm at? Too much? Not enough?

Also. I've read different things about putting a light coat of gun oil on everything before I reassemble it. Should I?

Here are a bunch of pictures over the next couple of posts.

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