Quote Originally Posted by Spc. Scott View Post
Nighthawk, how much work did you have to do to get the blade to what it looks like now? I just got two blades from Track of the Wolf and out of the box they look like the aluminum castings that I did in high school. Kinda like they had been poured in foundry sand molds.
It had some heavy mold marks. I had to cut off two large rectangles at the base of the blade (on the tang) and at the bottom of the tang. I used a hacksaw and they came off without much problem. The steel is really good quality, though, so I had to take time to let the blade cool down a couple times- and my son thought my metal saw was a wood saw and destroyed a blade... I was hacking away thinking "Wow! This is taking a long time! Is this actually stainless steel?" And then I saw that the middle of the blade was almost flat... Darned kids... So- long story short: Hacksaw worked well to get the mold marks off, and I used a file to smooth it down. It took about 3 hours worth of work to get it cleaned up. It wasn't too tough, and it looks really nice. That's actually how I know it will polish up nice- where I filed it, it all nice and shiny.

Oh, and I think they're wax cast blades, but I can't swear to it.