I restored this rusty $1 can opener to find out It’s worth MUCH more…

I got this ancient looking can opener for just 1€ to restore it. While restoring it I found out it was not a worthless vintage item like I thought… The can opener is pretty rusty and the old paint is partially gone. Also the wooden part is pretty bad looking and there is a bit of mold on it. Sometimes looking for items to restore I make similar finds which I could flip fast for good profit. My typical projects are so laborious and require me to buy expensive parts so they are not usually good for making profit. So far I’ve kept all the items to myself. However it would be interesting to occasionally post videos doing restorations for business and flipping flea market finds for profit. Would you be interested in such videos?

After buying the can opener I started googling vintage can opener etc. and I found similar looking opener that were used by German in the world war 2. German ground find items are not extremely rare here, but I didn’t see any markings so I thought it’s probably just normal can opener with similar design. After disassembly I cleaned most of the loose dirt off the parts and put the parts is rust remover. After sitting in there overnight, I could just wash off the loosened rust with water. After this washing I noticed there was some text on the scales. I removed the paint with paint stripper and found that it said FRAWAG elite. This meant this is an original German can opener from WWII. I went on ebay to check out the prices and I was blown away to see the most expensive german can opener were priced at 150 euros (165 USD). For a can opener! And I got it for 1€…

Under the paint there was some sort of plating. I wasn’t sure I could nickel plate over it for even color so I removed it by sanding. The other metal parts were sanded as well. I went all the way up to 2000 grits. After this the parts were polished. This gives a decent polishing results with reasonable work. The blade was also sharpened with a tiny file because I intend to use this. I only have one of those “normal” can openers which are basically a bent piece of sheet metal.

After the metal parts were polished I cleaned the up with acetone and electroplated them with nickel. More about that process can be found from my Odd Experiments video ( Nickel plating will protect the parts from rust. I didn’t plate the blade because the nickel would just wear off. That amount of nickel would certainly do no harm but it doesn’t do any good either. And I will have to clean the blade after use anyways.

I decided that since the mold on the wood hadn’t done much damage I sanded it off and then sanded the whole handle so that it still had nice patina to remind of the history of the item. Also I really like the patina’s contrast with the polished metal.

After all the parts were done I assembled everything with rivets. And gave the can opener a quick polish to remove whatever scratches I had got on it during assembly.

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Tools used in this video :
ROTARY TOOL:
PRESS FOR ROTARY TOOL:
2-AXIS TABLE FOR THE PRESS
POLISHING KIT:
NICKEL ANODE:
NICKEL PLATING SOLUTION:
CHUCK NORRIS’ TOOTHBRUSH:

Other tools:
CORDLESS DRILL:

MY FILMING GEAR:
MAIN CAMERA:
MAIN TRIPOD:
MICROPHONE:
VIDEO LIGHTS:
MAIN LENS:
CINEMATIC LENS:
WIDE ANGLE LENS:
GOPRO:


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