Customer Restored Norton IM-313
Customer Restored Vintage Norton IM-313
Roy from Walla Walla, Washington is a longtime customer and he was generous enough to share his story and his before and after photos of his Norton IM-313.
Thanks for sharing, Roy!
I started the project then it got set aside and I finally just finished it up. I was able to pull and reuse the two pins that hold the small Norton Abrasives tag from the base but I had to drill the brass rivets from the top to remove the top plate so I could strip the paint. For now, I'm using stainless steel screws and nuts to hold the top plate. However, a friend is a machinist and he's going to make me some brass rivets this summer when I visit him.
I used a lye bath in a 5-gallon plastic bucket to strip the paint, then I used a friends glass bead cabinet to really clean it up. I used an etching primer from VHT and the paint is from Rust-Oleum. Originally there was a sheet of sandpaper from the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) company and while I could have reused it I used an 1/8" thick sheet of styrene butadiene rubber so as to not scratch any countertops.
I never use the coarse Crystolon so for the new stones I used the Medium Crystolon, Fine India and the hard Arkansas White. I believe that originally there were thin leather pieces that went between the steel hold downs and the stones however they were hard and crumbling. I made new pieces from some upholstery leather I had on hand.
The way I came by it was a friend gave it to my son, however, I had a newer plastic IM-313 and I traded him. My friend started working for a grocery company called Safeway when he was 16 and he got the unit about 50 years ago.
As far as sharpening goes, I was a meat cutter for a few years and the man who taught me to sharpen knives had started with Safeway in 1934 at the age of 15. He worked part-time as an apprentice cutter, then became a cutter then a meat manager and finally a store manager. He opened his own mom and pop store in 1949.