So I picked up another Kalmasch….
This was supposedly double silver mounted, but it appears that it’s actually nickle plated brass.
The lid was dented all over. I started pressing out the dents, and as I was doing that, little silver flakes started coming off the inside of the lid. I would imagine that the dings all over the lid had created little fractures in the nickle plating that over time allowed the plating to separate from the brass. The hinge was a bit wobbly, but the pin had worked itself loose, and just pressing the pin back into place firmed the lid up.
I clean up the internals as best I could, then moved on to waxing the exterior. At one point during this process, the rear mount separated from the stummel. Made it easy to clean out the well…
I picked up the rear mount, and looked at the rear. Dark brown solid material was in there. I figured I’d clean that out. I ended up settling on alcohol to dissolve it. After letting it soak for a few hours I used a stiff bristled nylon brush to remove the rest of the material. I smelled the alcohol, which was sort reddish-brown color, and noticed a scent which I haven’t smelled for decades. Mucilage. Remember that bottle with the red top and you pressed the red tip and pulled it across stuff you were gluing together?
I grew up in town that a stockyards, two 1900’s meat processing plants, a rendering plant, and an old school 1940’s sewage processing plant. When the wind was blowing from the East, and especially when the temperature was in the 30’s to 40’s and there was a lot of moisture in the air, that funk violated your nostrils and hit your sense like a battering ram rolling out the door on they way to school in the morning.
Hide glue - I’m pretty sure that’s what they used to adhere the mounts.
Incidentally, the dark coloring on the rear half of the stummel seems to have burned off, evaporated, whatever during the waxing operation… it’s in the ether.
