I had a little bit of cleanup left to do. I put a couple of coats of Tru-Oil on the knob and tote. I also had the cam rest from CL810 that I hadn't cleaned up yet.

Before.

After.

Then there was the slitter which I hadn't payed any attention to yet. I cleaned it up on some wet dry paper to remove some surface corrosion. It was pretty dull so out came the diamond plates.

I quickly realized there was a lot of work to do on that little sucker and that it wasn't all going to get done freehand. There is a chip in one cutting edge and a lot of pitting in spots on the bevel:

There is a lot of pitting at the back too:

So, I gave it a marginally passable edge on the side opposite the chip and let it go. Rather than grinding back past the chip and hoping for the best with the pitting, if I find the slitter is something I have use for, I'll just make a new one from some O1 stock. This one isn't worth the effort.

The final chore was putting some rust protection on the metal since I'd brushed it down to bare in most spots. I had kept it oiled since clean-up so I wiped the parts down to remove the oil. I decided to go with good old paste wax.

I put a coat on pretty much everywhere. I rubbed it into the stippled cast areas with the tooth brush and put a thin coat on the insides of holes with a q-tip.

I let it dry until it hazed over and buffed it out with a cotton rag. All the hardware bits got the same treatment except the threads. Threads got rolled in the block of Parrafin wax before being installed.

Now it was time to put it all back together

) I had taken plenty of pictures during disassembly to be sure I got all the screws and thumbscrews put back in the proper spots. First, I put the fence piece back together.

Next was the skate.

And finally the main body.

Then I put them all together with the rods.

I can see that making some longer rods for this guy is going to be a priority. These short ones strike me as pretty useless for anything other than rabbets or grooves really close to the edge. I have some bar stock so as soon as time permits, I'll be turning some longer ones.

Looking back and comparing a "before" picture:

with a few "after" pictures:

I feel like the effort thus far has been time well-spent. I know looking nice won't make it work better. But, it makes it more of pleasure to pick up and use for me.

I ain't done though. I still have the functional elements to address! Like I said, I need to make some longer rods. And I have a whole set of the original cutters that came with this baby that I haven't even taken out of the box yet. So, next time, I'll pull the blades out and assess their conditions and get to sharpening.

Until then, thanks for dropping by