Vintage Rusty Wiss Scissors Restoration

I just finished another tool restoration today. This one is of a vintage rusty pair of Wiss-Inlaid scissors.

Wiss scissors is a big brand name in scissors. The company was started by Jacob Wiss in Newark, New Jersey. Wiss was a thirty year-old cutler and gunsmith who immigrated to the United States from Switzerland in 1847. During the American Civil War, Wiss was contracted by the Union Army to make scissors and shears for their medical units, and his company prospered and grew. After Jacob died in 1880, his sons took over the business, and by 1914 had grown the company into the world's largest producer of shears and scissors. In 1976 Wiss was acquired by Cooper Industries, and is now a member of the Apex Tool Group.

I had an interesting new problem during this restoration. After preparing the metal, I taped the blades, powder coated the handles and baked the paint as usual. But after baking, when I removed the high-temp tape covering the blades, I discovered the blade metal had turned blue! Pretty, but not exactly vintage! I thought they might be ruined and wasn't exactly sure how to deal with it. Fortunately, the coloring was just on the surface and I was able to polish the blades again and restore them back to their original shine. I'm still not sure why that happened exactly. My guess is that it could be some chemical in the powder paint, or maybe the tape, that is released during the heat treatment that reacted with the scissor metal. Or maybe just normal oxidation of this kind of metal during heating? If anyone has any ideas on why this happened or knows for sure, maybe someone who knows metals and chemistry, please let me know. I'm really interested in how this happened and how to prevent it in the future. I would be extremely grateful for the knowledge!

Thanks so much for watching! You can tell me what you think in the comments below, and also feel free to let me know if there is something you'd like to see me restore, maybe I can do it.

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#restoration#tools#DIY