1891 German ''Weltrekord'' Ratchet Screwdriver — Restoration



It was around three months ago when I visited my friend that works at the steel waste. He made an amazing found. He found multible items that were in a very rough condition. They almost had some kind of concrete on them and a lot of heavy rust. This little screwdriver got my attention right away. It was not clearly visible what the function of it was, but I remember that I thought it might be some kind of ratchet mechanism. At home I posted a few pics of it in my Instagram story. It didn't took long for @hand tool rescue to reply, as he has the same screwdriver, just a slightly modern version of it, but similar mechanism. After some research I found some more pics and videos online. The brand is „Weltrekord“ made in Germany and it's called „Hebelschraubenzieher“ which meas „lever scredriver“. The model I found was the first ever designed one from 1891. Weltrekord later made some small changes on the design. Newer ones have a small collet to clamp the insert bits and even newer ones came with plastic handles instead of wood.
At first I thought this will be a quick straight forward restoration project. It turned out to be a very tricky one. The most difficult part was definitely the disassembly, it took me three full days to get it in pieces. Heavy rust has done so much damage to all of the parts. Unfortunately the handle cracked when I removed it. I tried to restore it, but it became a huge mess and I decided to make a new one to have a nice and clean look. There's a 40 minutes version of this video on my Patreon page where I show how I tried to repair the handle. I had to weld up material on a lot of parts and machined and sanded it clean afterwards. That all worked perfectly fine. Some parts have still very slight pitting but overall it turned out very well. For the finish on the steel parts I decided to try nickel plating for the first time and it worked fantastic. I went with a brushed finish and with the nickel coat the parts turned out amazing. I really like the look of the nickel plated parts with the wooden handle.
I hope you like my work and the video.
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웅록 윤
Time and costs of this restoration:
$5 wood for the handle
$3 spring steel wire
$10 vinegar for nickel solution
I was working on this project for 2 weeks
My camera:
Panasonic HC-V180
If you have any questions about the process, machines i'm using or other stuff, just ask me in the comments. I read them all and i try to reply as soon as possible.
Sorry for my bad english, it's not my language. I try my best to improve my technical english.
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Thank you for watching :-)
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