Landis Strap Cutter - Restoration / Sharpening

Bought the strap cutter and with shipping the price was fair but it really needed a new blade.

The blade had a chip knocked out of it, too deep to sharpen out, and too deep to live with. After pricing out the new blade at over $100 I decided I should at least try to fix it, since I would have nothing to loose.

I decided that the TIG welder was going to be the answer... TIG is amazing, much more like gas welding than MIG.
So I added some metal to the edge of the blade.

And ground it off very slowly keeping it cool.

Made the Herculean effort to get the blade off of the shaft so I could sharpen it using my DIY Dremel grinder attachment sharpening system.

Removing these blades must be done carefully, the Left Hand thread is always confusing, they are hard to hold, and easily damaged.

After sharpening I quickly tried it out and with softer leather the cut was not all the way through. I decided that it was because the gap between the drive teeth and the outer ring was too great, about 0.080" So I shimmed the drive teeth out about 0.015" and cut 0.025" from the inside of the ring making the gap less than half the width it was. The leather can't be pushed down into the gap like it used to.

And here she is all finished.

I repainted all of the black parts and the logo too, then not wishing to match the green and I like the mild "worn" look I simply sprayed the entire piece with clear lacquer, after a thorough washing with Super-Clean.