Restoration of Georgian Qama Dagger - Epic Edition. Hi. Today, I’m doing an epic restoration of a Georgian Qama dagger. By type, it is also Caucasian. The piece came to me in very poor condition: damage to the cutting edge, deep corrosion, old rust, no handle, and a broken tang. But it ended up in the right hands, and now I’m going to fix it.

So, first of all, I cleaned the surface by hand using a soft brush and moved on to restoring the tang for the handle scales. Part of it was bent, so I straightened it, corrected it, gave it the proper shape, and cleaned up the edges. I took a small piece of sheet metal, estimated the approximate shape it needed to have, and started using a welding machine. Once I welded it, I removed the excess. Then I added another piece of metal so that part of the tang would be between the two scales. After everything was finished, I corrected this part, gave it the proper shape, and moved on to removing the rust.

To remove the rust, of course, the first thing I used was an old Caucasian method traditionally used for old antique blades. But it didn’t work because, as I mentioned, the rust turned out to be very deep and completely hardened.

The next step was to soften this rust. I managed to do that partially with kerosene and hot oil. The whole process took several days, but it still didn’t give me the result I needed. I decided to move on to a third option: using a modern cleaning product that is gentle but effective, along with some old sandpaper, to remove only the layer of hardened rust. Not to grind the blade, please note. This method gave me a good result. After the blade was cleaned, I made a final pass over it by hand with a rubber wheel and fine sandpaper to remove burrs and any small uneven areas.

Next, I had another serious job to do on the blade — restoring the lines that run along the fullers on one side. It wasn’t easy. First, I used a pneumatic engraver, then files of different shapes. After these lines were restored, I blackened the blade, firstly to protect it, and secondly so there wouldn’t be such a huge contrast on the surface of the piece. Once everything was ready, I applied graphite grease to the blade and moved on to the handle. Well, as usual, of course, I used buffalo horn. I took two scales, cut them to the required shape, drilled the holes, and started shaping and finishing them.

While working on the handle, I went back to the tang again to fill the gaps that remained. But I deliberately didn’t do this earlier, because I needed to fit everything so that there would be a gap of 0.5–1 millimeter between the tang and the scales. Once I filled all the gaps with copper-phosphorus brazing alloy, I went back to working on the handle, gave it the proper shape, and, after mounting the scales with ordinary wooden pins, I realized that it was already ready.

The next step was the rivets. Of course, for such an old piece, I used authentic original silver rivets from the 19th century with niello. The difficulty was extending the legs of these rivets so that they could be properly peened. The first attempt, of course, didn’t work because one of the rivets bent, and I had to redo both of them, reinforcing one with a brass tube.

Then I peened everything through washers, and once the handle was completely finished, I treated it with linseed oil, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and moved on to making the scabbard from dry wood. When the scabbard was ready, I glued it together, shaped it, gave it the proper form, and covered it with natural leather. I also acquired authentic fittings for the scabbard, dating from the late 19th to the early 20th century, also originally from a Caucasian dagger. After fitting the parts, I additionally made a pocket on this large Caucasian dagger, where I inserted an authentic 19th-century knife.

After everything was ready and the pocket had dried, I gave the scabbard a final wipe with linseed oil, added a suspension strap, and did a test for you, as usual.

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Sincerely, Alex. Thanks for attention!
Good luck and health to everyone! With best wishes, Alex!
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