Thankfully to my good friend from Russia I was fortunate to restore this extremely desirable and beautiful piece of history - ‘SQUIRREL’ pocket knife. It is valuable among collectors and unique design gave this knife huge popularity.

About The ‘SQUIRREL’ (Перочинный нож «Белка») Pocket Knife

The squirrel pocket knife, which began production in the 1970's, is considered the most popular among the Soviet population. All boys, young men and men dreamed of receiving this penknife as a gift.

"Squirrel" cost 1.60 or 2.20 and was produced in huge quantities - for general use. The knife is quite convenient to use and when folded takes up little space and weighs less than one hundred grams. The total length of the "squirrel" is 20.5 cm (8”), the blade is 8.5 cm (3.5”). It was produced with overlays of gray, dark gray, brown and black colors.

True, today, despite the millions of "squirrels", it is quite difficult to buy this knife in good condition. When buying, you should always pay attention to the plastic pads and the condition of the blade (with severe wear, the integrity of the chrome coating is worn). Another feature of the "squirrel" is associated with the design of the knife: when opened, the blade often does not straighten 180 degrees. Only a few pieces form a straight line, and therefore were especially appreciated among collectors and amateurs.

The Restoration Process

I started by dismantling the pocket knife. I was super nervous because even though it looks like a simple pocket knife, it was quite hard to remove plastic pads and be able to punch four pins out.

Luckily that went really well, so I removed all surface rust on a foot powered stone wheel and sand all metal parts afterwards. The plastic pads were dirty and a bit worn. First, I removed all dirt on my treadle powered Dremel, washed both pads and then polished them by hand.

As a last step to prepare the blade, liners and spring for assembling, I polished them on my hand crank grinder and got myself a super shiny ¨new¨ parts. I glued the pads and put together the rest of the parts.

To finish this squirrel pocket knife, I sharpened it on my new wet stones from Japan with different grit sizes: 230, 1000, 3000 and 8000. I tested the sharpness of the pocket knife with plain paper and that gave me a huge smile. I highly recommend any Japanese wet stone.

Please subscribe if you want to see more of my upcoming restoration projects! And DON’T FORGET TO CHECK OUT Rare SMOKING PIPE Restoration - With AMAZING OUTCOME Video: https://youtu.be/TB6kbCdWaSs

Timestamps:
00:00 Before restoration
00:37 Restoration in progress
06:49 After restoration

Thank you for watching, see you in the next one!
Stay safe and ATB


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