Thread: 1st razor restoration.

Funny, I was going to post exactly what 10Pups did and then I saw your last post with the photo and had to delete my post! Good work, it looks seriously nice! What wood did you use?

Originally Posted by Christel

Funny, I was going to post exactly what 10Pups did and then I saw your last post with the photo and had to delete my post! Good work, it looks seriously nice! What wood did you use?

Thank you

The wood is just light oak from a staircase spindle ! With it been my first one I didn't want to use any of my exotic woods (I wish I'd actually used some snake wood now), I've never pinned anything before so I was woried about messing it up at that stage. In the past when I've done knife scales i've always used Corby bolts but the pinning went well enough, probably could look a bit neater but its secure.

I'm going to use a nicer bit of wood for the next one, a 6/8 Johnson razor which looks like its not seen much action but until its cleaned up I can't tell if its for the bin or a user, I took a gamble on eBay as it was only 99p ($1.60), the postage cost more at £2.80 lol. I'm thinking a nice bit of burl of some kind if I have any long enough for razor scales, all the wood I bought was intended for knife scales and razor scales are surprisingly long so I'm not sure how much I have that will be suitable. I can see me having to buy some more nice woods that are longer

There's a mega bargain going on for light horn if you fancy giving that a go - the ebay seller 'robsbits' is selling a load of them off for very little cost. Might be worth taking a look at it, since they ship from the UK and you'll get cheap postage.

I know what you mean about the pinning - but yours certainly looks fine in the photos. Give the heads a gentle rub with a file and then polish with micromesh - it makes even shoddy pinning jobs look way nicer.

Originally Posted by Christel

There's a mega bargain going on for light horn if you fancy giving that a go - the ebay seller 'robsbits' is selling a load of them off for very little cost. Might be worth taking a look at it, since they ship from the UK and you'll get cheap postage.

I know what you mean about the pinning - but yours certainly looks fine in the photos. Give the heads a gentle rub with a file and then polish with micromesh - it makes even shoddy pinning jobs look way nicer.

Thank you I'll take a look, never worked with horn but I do like the look. I work on the theory just give it a go and see what happens, the worst that can happen is you stuff it up and you have lost a bit of time and maybe a few quid, but if you never try something new I think you loose out more !

Great tip on the pinning

It's a piece of cake shaping horn - coarse sandpaper will shape it fairly quickly and it will polish up nicely with micromesh (Or Wet&Dry paper)
I bought ten slabs of the light horn today, for £1.95 (Plus P&P) per (Quite large) blank, it seemed rude not to make the most of it.

Ordered some dark horn blanks

I just need a bit of advice for when i come to hone this one if possible.

The blade has a fairly large smile going on, its not really clear from any of the pictures but the toe also has a slight ridge. Would it be advisable to completely straighten the edge off (i think its known as bread knifing) or just run with the blade as is and go with the smile ?