All About Pocket Knives

Tried searching for some answers but so far no luck. I am trying to get some good high resolution scans of the Russell blades to send to the museum and am having problems scanning them.I've tried several settings from the standard 150 dpi all the way up to 1200 dpi and the detail in all instances is very dark. Someone mentioned once that the background color has a lot to do with how well the picture turns out.
My scanner has the standard white background and I'm using the gray scale setting. Should I be using a gray background or possibly another color? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

There is a thread on this created by Bernard Levine on Blade forums.
I read thru it several times, and his suggestion for a background color is the tan color of a manila folder.

His reasoning is the neutral color prevents the scanner from auto correcting the contrast/brightness of the image. He also goes in depth as to what setting work best, and why.
The thread is located in his forum on BF.

You could ask upnorth, he gets excellent scans of his knives. He mostly frequents the big forum.

The scanner is important, not all are the same. Some will not do 3D objects well. It depends on their focal depth.

I used to get great scans with my Canon, but when I bought a new computer and a newer Windows OS, Canon had ceased upgrading the software for the scanner I had. I bought a new Epson, but it does not do nearly as well as the old Canon.

Use a light tan or sepia background
Dark colors absorb too much of the light.

Don't use the grey scale. Use color photo.

It helps to have a photo editing program. There are free ones available. One does not have to have PhotoShop.

I use PhotoScape.

Charlie

The older scanners seem to work best. I have not had good luck with the new scanners that use an LED light source. The LEDs seem to create lots of reflections. Unfortunately, I left my old Epson behind when I moved. Wish I still had it. My newer Epson has the LED light source. Charlie (upnorth) uses an AGFA E50 --that's about 17 years old.

Shiny surfaces do appear dark in scans. Try rotating the knife to change the light reflections. The orientation of the knife on the scanner can have a huge affect on the reflections.

Lots of good advice in the previous posts but I thought my additional 2 cents might be helpful.

Thanks to all that replied;it will give me some ideas to try. My scanner is a Hewlett-Packard 5300C that is about 20 years old.

There are references as to a few scanners that work best in the forum thread I mentioned. I wish I remembered a few of them but I don't.
I was certainly the older models, as mentioned in this thread (pre LED)