Restore or not restore an old knife ?

[Mimifred]

I recently bought an "old" elinox and the blade has some scratches.

What would you do with that. Polish it to make it look in better shape or leave it as it is...

[Lynn LeFey]

Personally, I'd leave it. It gives the piece 'character'.

[Mimifred]

I know it is a personal choice and that I might have 50 answers "do it" and 50 "don't do it" but still... I'm curious.

[Marius]

To me it looks like the blade also lost some metal due to sharpening, enough to alter its shape. Personally I'd polish it, nothing to lose there (unless you want to keep it like this, for character or such - nothing wrong there).

[Mimifred]

Here is a cleaner pic of the blade. Do you think the blade has been that altered ?

[Marius]

I take it back  It looked to me that it lost some belly due to too much sharpening. But I got one of mine out and looked closely, the blade shape appears to be very close to original. Enjoy! (polished or not) 

[PTRSAK]

I've cleaned up light scratching on blades like that using very fine wet&dry by putting the paper on the desk, near the edge and laying the blade flat on it then pushing and pulling to slide the blade lengthways. Using light pressure on the blade with the fingers of the other hand. If you just use the one patch on the paper it wears out as you go and effectively gets finer. I usually start with 800 or 1000 grit and find that it fixes most light scratches. This won't leave the blade with a mirror polish but I find a light linear texture looks quite nice, especially on Alox knife blades.

[Mimifred]

I take it back  It looked to me that it lost some belly due to too much sharpening. But I got one of mine out and looked closely, the blade shape appears to be very close to original. Enjoy! (polished or not) 

I think it was due To the angle of the picture...

[Mimifred]

I've cleaned up light scratching on blades like that using very fine wet&dry by putting the paper on the desk, near the edge and laying the blade flat on it then pushing and pulling to slide the blade lengthways. Using light pressure on the blade with the fingers of the other hand. If you just use the one patch on the paper it wears out as you go and effectively gets finer. I usually start with 800 or 1000 grit and find that it fixes most light scratches....

I've tried in the past on another blade with 600 sand paper for cleaning scratches and then with 1000 for preparing before polishing.

Then polished with a dremel and polish paste and it worked pretty well... I'll try the same method on this one and see how it goes.

[crackout]

I had to sharpen one blade really thoroughly because it had a really deep dent in the edge.
As a result the blade lost some of its belly but I don't care. It needs to be sharp and smooth.
Scratches on the sides of the blade don't bother me as long as the performance is not compromised.