Thread: W&B Black Horn straight up resto

Originally Posted by mycarver

Oh I have no doubt they work very well. Ancient razors are a testament to this method. Maybe it's the German in me that compels me to where if I build it I want to over build it to some level that in all probability isn't needed!

I'm the guy you could put in a sandbox with a rubber mallet and a bowling ball and I'll find a way to break the ball.

I see in your sig line you are an artist. Me too. What type of art?

Hah! Yeah, in most things I'm totally an 'overbuild it until it's silly, then overbuild it some more' kind of guy. Something about razors brings out the otherwise dormant fundamentalist though, so I try to make all my repairs and restorations as much like the original as possible... Some day, I'll be pressing my own scales, I'm sure of it.

I've done basically any kind of commercial art people would pay me for. Most of it's been digital (I've been on that bandwagon since '85 -- yikes), a lot of that was interface design for web pages and boring corporate logos, but I've also done some illustration for books & magazines. The last 3-4 years have been more writing than art though.

I have a really hard time balancing the two impulses, and when I'm deep in an art project, my writer brain gets lost out in the ether and takes a while to come back (but oddly, I can go directly from writing to art with no problem).

very interesting ,thanks!
I know quite well the feeling of getting lost in the ethers!
I too have been leaning heavily towards the fundamentalist approach and bring these razors back to what they once were. Many times that's more of a challenge than buffing them willy -nilly and slapping on something called scales.

Originally Posted by mycarver

very interesting ,thanks!
I know quite well the feeling of getting lost in the ethers!
I too have been leaning heavily towards the fundamentalist approach and bring these razors back to what they once were. Many times that's more of a challenge than buffing them willy -nilly and slapping on something called scales.

Sometimes, after really intensive sculpting (digital, in my case), it can take me a couple of hours to remember how to talk. I'd love to figure out how Clive Barker manages to spend hours every day doing both art and writing.

One of the things I like to keep in the back of my mind when I'm doing restoration work is the following statistic from Lloyd's 'The Cutlery Trades'.

In Sheffield, circa 1880, this was the case:

An out working spring knife cutler working with his fourteen year old son made in one week 56 dozen knives. For these he was paid 5s 3d per gross, fourteen dozen being counted to the gross. They worked fully 70 hours per week and sometimes 16 hours a day.

Razor manufacture was about the same, maybe a bit more, and in razors it was common for a dozen to be either 13 or 14. That's in the neighborhood of a 100 articles a day between two people.

There's a film from the mid 70's, showing an old Sheffield guy making a pocket knife. It's amazing to watch him work.

I really cherish all the time I've got to spend preserving the work those folks did.

Ah yes, don't you know it. I cherish the time spent with razors. Although I do love my work as well.
Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

Let me echo all of the praise for you work. You are a true craftsman and keeping these old artifacts alive, functional and beautiful is a real gift.