RARE GUN Lighter Restoration – World War I

RARE GUN Lighter Restoration – World War I

This relic was found in the late 60’s early 70’s and brought to a barn where it has been contained together with a lot of other WW2 metal garbage, uniforms, helmets, and other rusted materials. I was lucky to be able to buy a whole lot of relics from this family and therefore have more videos about this in the future.

The lighter is made of brass and old copper cartridges dated 1939. I am not sure who used this ammunition during WW2, but the cartridges had these numbers stamped in: P315 Iva1 – 7 -39. In my opinion it could be German Mauser ammunition – but I’m not 100% sure. So if you have any info about this, please leave a comment below.

THE RESTORATION PROCESS
I started by doing a quick cleaning of the lighter to get an overview of the restoration. Then I removed the flint wheel and the wick holder and both was in good restorable condition which was fantastic after all these years. I continued by detaching all the parts which was soldered on the lighter frame: the trigger, the trigger guard and finally the copper cartridges.

I cleaned all the small parts in my vibrating tumbler using aluminum oxide as my media. And I cleaned the gun frame and the copper cartridges in my sandblaster using very fine glass beads together with low air pressure. Just to preserve as much as possible.

All the parts were in fantastic condition of course there were a lot of scratches, dents, and tiny cracks on the lighter parts after all these years. After the sandblasting I gave the parts a very gentle hand grinding with some high grit sandpaper. I also polished all the parts but I managed to get a good compromise between looking good and still preserve some of the wear and tear on the lighter.

I soldered it all together and added lighter fluid cotton, a new wick, flint and flint spring to the project. And finished it all by making a new wick lid on my lathe.