Thread: Just for clarification...

I have about 7 vintage razors at this point. Only 2 are pretty, and one of those isn't even honed yet. They are cool old razors, but some are stained, or have patches of dark stain where rust was, etc. But they're sharp and shave or will be. Any reason to care about how pretty they are, other than collecting some day?

It totally depends on you. Some feel that age marks and stains add character to vintage razors, others will settle for nothing less than shiny mirror finished perfection. As long as the blade is free of corrosion that will degrade the steel there is no physical reason to be worried. Aesthetics OTOH, well that's another story....

mirror finished restaored vintage blades are not as pretty as a nicely aged blade. granted sometimes the restoration work requires grinding on the blade so in those cases the final polish is fine. most blades though polish up ok with the age spots intact you can still have a nice shine without the mirror polish.

patina slows the oxidation so does the mirror finish so the choice is yours.

I like patina, but I also like my NOS razor and my restored razors. I don't have a new razor yet, but may buy a Revisor as my 'last' razor. I like some of my vintage and antique cufflinks with patina and some polished to 'as new'. In razors, I feel too much patina is essentially rust which is essentially trouble; there's a fine line...

Two of mine have a mirror-finish. The other honed ones are servicable, but could probably use cleaned up either way. The dark spot on one is pretty dark, and might still be rust on some magnified view. I think I'll let them be until I learn a little more and have a couple more razors in the rotation. Any easy way to tell know where the threshold lies between a petina and problematic rust? Maybe I'll post a couple of pics...

The top two razors are the ones I'm concerned about. The bottom one is polished to a mirror shine.

I would at least give them a quick wipe down with some mothers mag polish on a rag ,thats what i do with mine and it still leaves a nice patina while taking care of the majority of the crud. The one i would be most concerned about is the middle one near the spine looks like it might be active rust. Good luck and have fun!

If it's red it's active.

Originally Posted by DFriedl

I have about 7 vintage razors at this point. Only 2 are pretty, and one of those isn't even honed yet. They are cool old razors, but some are stained, or have patches of dark stain where rust was, etc. But they're sharp and shave or will be. Any reason to care about how pretty they are, other than collecting some day?

Stain and patina not a problem.

I often spend 10 min working the surfaces of
my razors with MAAS before I hone a razor
and put it back into the rotation.

For me the important bit is that there are no
active rust pits for bacteria to hide in and a monthly
polish seems to help on this.

MAAS is only one brand of the many polishes that
folk here use. If there is any rust or old pits
that need additional work I keep after the blade
with 1000 or 2000 grit wet dry 3M paper.