Thread: Old razor revival questions

This is Restoration... See it is pretty easy to do the "Oh just wipe it with a rag and polish dance" right until you start and find that under there is where the work begins First thing is to "Tune up the razor" hehehe since it is a Hollow grind hold it near your ear and use your thumb to pluck the edge, that singing sound is what you always want to hear.. Try it near the toe in the middle and at the heel, remember it...
Go back to the 320 grit and settle in and start sanding, I used to start with each grit dry, then at the 400 grit level I would start dry, then spray WD-40 on the razor and keep sanding, it helped to create almost a slurry and that got me better finishes with hand sanding..

Stay on the 320 until one of two things happens,,,

1. You get rid of all the crap and get the look you want
2. You sand for hours and "tune" the razor and notice that the song went flat, that means yer done, you have reached the maximum you can take that edge down to...

Progress up through the grits and polish out, switch to a compound like MAAS, Flitz, Semichrome, Blue Magic etc :etc:

That should get you to where you need to be and the razor is ready for the hones


ps: There are more tips & tricks along with all this info I just typed in that link I gave you above

This is Restoration... See it is pretty easy to do the "Oh just wipe it with a rag and polish dance" right until you start and find that under there is where the work begins

Yup, i felt like lightning mcqueen getting schooled by doc hudson on the dirt track when i realized that under the crud was where the actual work started.

First thing is to "Tune up the razor" hehehe since it is a Hollow grind hold it near your ear and use your thumb to pluck the edge, that singing sound is what you always want to hear.. Try it near the toe in the middle and at the heel, remember it...

Thanks heaps, this is the part of the puzzle i really needed, wow ive just been doing this it sounds great.(my wife is really looking at me strangely now )

Well gentlemen, I have made a second attempt with this razor.It was back to the 320 grit in emery tape, then wet and dry up the grades. I would have to say its far from perfect, but when i look at it to my eye it looks good and id be more than happy to shave with it (i could be biased after the hours of sanding of course).

Thank you all for the help and for pointing me toward the light, and i must say that tuning this razor was most enjoyable, and i was most surprised that i actually found the hours of hand sanding very therapeutic.

Next part of the process that will be required is a hone.



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And much to my wifes dismay, i may have found two more old razors in need of similar treatment.

Originally Posted by hunty

And much to my wifes dismay, i may have found two more old razors in need of similar treatment.

The Bengali looks like a great find! It sounds like you are picking up speed. Welcome to the club!

I highly recommend that you make yourself a magnetic razor holding jig. It will do 3 things. 1. Stop you from slicing of a finger tip. 2. Stop you from dropping the razor and breaking it. 3. Stop you from snapping off often surprisingly brittle scales.

The jig will be particularly helpful when you use WD40 as per gssixgun's excellent recommendation. It is a great addition to the sanding process, but man does the razor gets slick.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...razor-jig.html

Originally Posted by hunty

And much to my wifes dismay, i may have found two more old razors in need of similar treatment.

And, in addition, you will find that the world is full of little old razors that need some TLC.

That looks brilliant, thank you very much.

Well a sharpened my razor tonight and had a shave with it and OMG it was such a smooth shave, man i just cant figure out if it was that a carbon steel blade has a different feeling to a stainless, or if ive just hit a large jump in my shaving technique or if its just that ive put so many hours into this razor that i could be hacking half my face off with a rusty chisel and my brain would still be telling me it was the best damn shave of my life , but damn it was a really good shave.
One thing ive started to notice is how relaxing shaving is with a straight, its almost like a form of meditation, just awesome.

So, the sharpening.The weapons for the job were a norton 220/1000 combination and a 4000/8000 combination water stones, with a norton flattening stone to flatten the water
stones.Last night i flattened the water stones, i gave them three grid patterns with a wood working pencil for each grit and took all the sharp edges off the corners.

After a very close inspection of the blade, i decided i would start on the 1000 and set a bevel.this took quite alot of work, i kept going until i could shave hair off my arm, one thing that i found interesting was that i could remove hair with the heel and tip edge before i could with the center of the blade(im not sure if this was a deficiency in my technique or what) but i took it slow, concentrated on my technique and in addition to arm shaving i inspected the bevel on each side of the blade regularly.

One thing i didnt do was tape the spine, and as a result ended up with honing wear on it, doesnt particularly bother me with this razor as its far from perfect, but i think if it was a really nice razor i would not be happy with that type of wear.

When i could shave arm hair, i went to the 4000/8000 and followed a pyramid routine off this site, 25/25, 20/20, 15/15, 10/10, 5/5, 3/3, 1/3, 1/5, and then i went to the leather strop and gave it alot of stropping.

At the end of this, i tried the razor on my arm and it was peeling off arm hair as smooth as, so i figured may as well try it out with a shave.

One thing i think i really benifited from was buying a professionally honed razor from the start, as it seemed much easier to judge the blade.

Thanks straight razor place and straight razor ppl i could not have achieved this without you.

Thanks for posting the pics hunty, you've given me more motivation to try my hand at restoration =] I'm also a newb only shaved with a shavette so far waiting on my first real razor to arrive in the mail but I'm looking for fixxeruppers on ebay to practise honing