SS Dagger..restore it or not?

[drago1983]

Hi,
I finally bought this SS dagger because is the only one I can afford, how much can it worth?
is an early marked Robert Klass, with their trade mark, it has a district marked roman number "I" on the cross guard. Both the top and bottom guards are stamped ST inside, which is an SS maker of cross guards.... Some the wood is missing from the handle, so someone has filled in the missing portions with wood putty, also the blade has a number of water marked pittings on it. It has a very nice original SS scabbard with all screws intact.

I just thinking about restauration...I mean I can complete the work that the other guy did and paint the handle or I can remove all the wood putty and leave it as is...what do you think?

Anybody knows what district is the "1"?

Thanks,
Davide

[drago1983]

More

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Davide, I would certainly carefully removed that wood putty. It looks awful. He has even got it on the crossguards. Better to have missing section of wood than that.

The "I" is not a gruppe mark. It is the mark to show the dagger passed through one of the three SS distribution centres. These were:

"I" was for Munich
"II" was for Dresden
"III" was for Berlin.

The dagger would benefit from a gentle clean. The fingerprints need to be removed from the blade. The scabbard may have been repainted.

Cheers, Ade.

[drago1983]

Any guess about restoring it ?

[davejb]

Personally, I would think seriously about having the handle proffesionally restored by an antiques dealer . there are some who have there own restorors on premises.They would cut out the old wood that needs replacing insert new pieces and then shape accordingly,or you could opt for a complete new handle but this would obviously devalue the whole dagger.At least with partial replacement you would have 90per cent originality, The blade I agree needs just a gentle wipe down to remove the fingerprints otherwise they will etch into the blade just as acid would.