Actually, it was for my birthday back in July, when I stumbled onto half a dozen nice Sheffield razors for next to nothing (the old codger wanted $25 apiece, or 5 for $100), so I brought home these:

including this W&B Celebrated Fine India Steel Diamond Edge in very good shape save for some pitting. Here it is BEFORE after polishing with Mother's:


Anyway, with some time on my break from school and teaching, I'm "wadeing" through these. But after my near debacle on that Frederick Reynolds I posted about recently (where I got a little too busy with the greaseless compounds), I didn't want to buff away too much, so after unpinning, I decided to wet-sand the blade by hand from 400/600/800/1000/1500/2000. The scales were in pretty good shape, so just some light sanding. As the pivot hole seemed worn and over-size, I filled it with epoxy and re-drilled it to 5/64."

I then buffed both the blade and the scales out with white compound and Fabluster, and re-polished just the blade with Mother's. Not wanting to lose the stamps, I left a little pitting behind; we'll call it character. I re-pinned with double-stack brass washers and NiAg pins, and buffed them on the compound. Here are the results AFTER:



Full disclosure: Not sure how well it shows, but there's a crack running through the wedge hole (which I filled with Hot Stuff thin CA) caused by "carefully" attempting to punch out the pin , as well as a divot I took out with a dremel cut-off wheel while trying to shave down the original peen-dammit! Looks like a little compound left behind too, but I can hand-buff that off.

Though it feels fairly snug, the wedge is still a little off. I may try to tweak that a little later.

HONING: Though I struggled at first to establish a bevel-I have a habit of getting close and then losing it on these soft British blades!-after watching a few of Glenn's videos, I re-taped with two layers, went back at the Norton 1k, and quickly nailed the bevel this time. I then finished it with a Norton pyramid on the 4/8k to keep things predictable (still learning after 2 years), stropped 15 strokes on CrOx linen, and 50 latigo, and she was popping hairs, so I stopped there.

I'll shave-test her tomorrow for Christmas Eve, and then maybe tweak the edge as necessary.

What I learned: Though she's nice and shiny, she wasn't in bad shape to begin with. Considering all the time and effort I put into this, if I had it to do again, I might have just polished/buffed it up, tightened the pins, and honed her up. The more I do this, the more I think of the physician's creed: "First, do no harm."

Thanks for any feedback; constructive criticism welcomed. Merry Christmas! Aaron