I inherited this from my father who recently passed away. It was his hunting knife for decades. As I recall, he made the sheath for it as one of his projects in a shop class in the late 40s. The blade has a little rust on the back of the blade near the maker’s mark. The handle also has a crack that you can see in the pictures. The maker is Imperial from RI. Any suggestions on how/where to restore this knife would be appreciated.

This is a close up picture of the handle. I couldn’t get it to post for some reason in the original thread.

Buy a replacement handle kit and clean the metal parts when it's apart. Very inexpensive, just a bit of work.

https://www.kabar.com/products...duct.jsp?item=1217HC


Here's a how-to by a guy doing a replacement and there are Youtube videos also.

https://www.usmilitariaforum.c...cked-leather-handle/

Just me but, I would not restore the character out of that knife. I would stop any active rust, clean and moisturize the leather, and sharpen it. That's it.

Have you tried soaking up the leather with a good leather conditioner? Maybe it will swell up the leather & close the spaces.

It isn't cracking, by the way. Those are individual leather washers compressed by the nut on the end of the handle against the hilt. The leather is drying out and shrinking.

As noted, you can get a kit to rehandle a leather washer handled knife. I bet you can find a Youtube video on how to do it.

Thanks all.