Wade and Butcher American Razor
Some of you guys have probably groaned over some of the past learning experiences I have posted on this forum. With this WB American, I finally learned from some past errors and this time, I got it (mostly) right; at least it's the best one I've done so far.
Anyway, I picked this one up, along with several other big smiling Sheffields that are now in my rotation, for a song last summer. Here is the before pic:
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps7f1c832a.jpg
Not too bad, but it had a fair amount of tarnish, was really scratched up, and had a lot of hone-wear. I tried to be somewhat restrained with the blade, doing some gentle buffing with 400 and 600-grit greaseless, then working my way up in grits with wet-dry before a final polish with aluminum white compound and fabuluster. Obviously I wanted to retain the stamps and engraving as much as possible.
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/x...psk8ar0hwc.jpg
For the scales, I had some nice feathered horn blanks I wanted to try (only my 2nd pair in horn). I love working with this natural material, as it's so easy to cut, grind and shape, then buff to a high polish. It got essentially the same treatment as the blade-I worked my way up through the wet-dry grits to 2500, then polished-I just love the luster of polished horn. Some nice feathering on the front side:
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps556yoqpw.jpg
And I also loved the brown and white streaking that I put on the back side. Not exactly a book-matched blank I know, but I like it.
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps4cmm9kvd.jpg
You guys who remember some of my past "restorations: may recall some big, fat spacers and rather ungainly wedges, which had given me some troubles putting the whole thing together. This time, I decided to try Ray Habya's method from the coticule.be forum here: http://www.coticule.be/rescaling.html
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps2xr8yjsd.jpg
As you can see, the blade just barely clears the wedge, and it closes a wee-bit cock-eyed. Though I followed Ray's alignment instructions as best I could (while also using Sixgun's wooden "tang" mockup idea), the downside of this method is that you epoxy the wedge in after you check alignment on the back end. Another contributing factor may be that I also forced one of the horn pieces to bend in a direction that it didn't necessarily want to go, but it all closes tight and snug (with some guidance!). I do love working with the aluminum, though, because it's soft, and cuts, grinds, and polishes up beautifully, and I'm pretty sure I got the thickness right this time, being careful to go with about half the thickness of the tang. The only thing that hasn't improved at all is my lousy iphone "photography," so it's hard to show just how pretty this one looks with those horn scales-I need a light-box!
Another thing I got much better this time was the pinning-amazing what a difference the right tool makes! Using my new flush-cut pliers (thanks Ebay!), I cut NiAg pins down to where it almost looked like I didn't have enough to peen over (which turned out to be perfect). She pinned up easily and tightly on both ends, with double-stacked SS washers, and inside brass bearing-washers on the inside of the pivot end.
I'll try to get that alignment right on the next one. But my takeaway from this one is that the wedge and the pinning, as I knew all along, are crucial to a decent finished razor!
A final polish, and a few coats of wax, and I'll hone her up tomorrow to see how she shaves. Thanks for looking, and constructive criticism is welcome as always! Aaron/SHD
