Restoring a Moroccan Jambiya/Kumya dagger and Other blades

[BJL]

I picked this up in Marrakesh, Morocco from a small arms shop. The scabbard is steel and camel bone. The blade is of a so-so quality steel- holds a good edge and point, but it was rusty to start with. Working on getting the rust off. It isn't an antique. I did an initial cleaning last night, but didn't take a picture before I started- it was pretty much entirely covered in rust. The steel wool I was using was too fine to get the thicker spots, so will pick up a different grade wool tonight. After pictures later. Any more suggestions? I was wondering if I should sharpen the top edge of the blade partly as well.

[mundaire]

http://www.indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3084

HTH

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[Olly]

That's a beautiful piece you have there... Do post a picture of the blade...

[BJL]

Thanks Abhijeet, I'd read that post before. It's good informative stuff.

Hey Olly, here's one of the blade after the thorough cleaning. Used 3M metal grade pad, and 000 steel wool, and some oil.


Now, while in Morocco, I did a fair bit of traveling and picked up a total of 9 blades. 6 of which were gifted. The one above, I kept, as well as a Touareg sword that I haggled for for over 3 hours and multiple rounds of mint tea and bread with a Touareg/Berber blacksmith. He didn't make it, he brought it over from Mali. But I did buy 6 small blades (5inch blades) that he made like the one at the bottom. Of those I kept the one in the picture and gave away 5. They make excellent gifts. These were all packed and shipped separately, and took quite a while to get to me (customs and all). But since I was cleaning that one up, I decided to get cracking and clean these as well.

Touareg sword. About 18 inches of blade, 30 overall. The blade had patches of light rust, and the bronze was turning as well. A good scrubbing with 000 steel wool fixed that. The blade pictures are before and after.





and after:


The Berber knife. Very crude, traditional western Saharan knife. The blade holds an edge very well, full tang. Sheath made of snake skin, camel hide and wood. The knife has scratches in it from the manufacturing process that won't come up with just a hand scrubbing. But seeing that its how their knives look anyway, I'm going to leave them there.



Before cleaning:


After:

[kalashnikovcult]

they are miss universe ..buddy...awesome collection !

[BJL]

Thanks Kalash.

[BJL]

What do you guys recommend using for finishing bronze? There's a lot of that on the sword.

[amit_sharma86]

from where can I find acronym section like to find words like HTH and BTW. earlier this section was available but i am trying to find it out but unable to do so. Please help.

[jhoonday]

It's a very beautiful antique Moroccan jambiya dagger. The over all length of this is 17 1/2 inches. I wish I could add this to my collection.

[kanwar76]

Wow BJL those are some nice swords/daggers. I don't knwo how i missed this post.

Congrats

-Inder

[m24]

Awesome blades.

Regards

[mcclure]

BJL,
That is a beautiful knife and the blade looks very nice after restoring. I'm going to Marrakesh in a few days and will be looking at knives. Can you give me an idea of prices?
Thanks in advance for help.

--John

[TC]

As an avid knife lover I am just FLOORED

Cheers

TC

[ramtiger]

Nice collection