George Butler "Shakespeare" Razor in Ziricote and Lessons Learned
Well, in addition to my renewed zeal for honing lately, I've been back at it in the shop working on some razors. No before pics, but I took the crappy plastic scales off of this Shakespeare razor and went to work, and here were the results:
Blade-Unfortunately, a long session with Mother's and a lot of elbow grease didn't help much, as there was some pretty deep pitting on the spine, blade face, and tang, and a good bit of stubborn tarnish and water-spotting to boot. But as it is a fairly hollow grind, and I was afraid of losing Shakespeare and the etched quote, I tried to go very light on the buffers, and just not even try to go for a mirror polish. In fact, after starting on 600 greaseless on a loose cotton wheel, I just very lightly hand-sanded up to 3000 and buffed it out with some Fabuluster.
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Scales-I had high hopes for the beautiful ziricote blank I had, but after cutting and shaping, hand-sanding through the grits again up to 3000, and buffing them up, I just couldn't get that effortless high polish I've gotten on some previously with rosewood, ebony, or horn. I hand-rubbed them with some Formby's Tung Oil Finish and buffed them out, which maybe helped a little. I'm not sure if ziricote is one of those oily woods that don't take finishes well-anybody with experience on it? Anyway, I've got some great ebony, bocote, rosewood, and horn in my stash, and I know I can work with those much easier on the next one. (Oh, and I know that they're not dead even thickness-wise either, but somehow they lined up and the blade closes tight and dead-centered anyway).
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Notice what appears to be like grain run-out on the edges that I had a hard time polishing up. I was using moist wet-dry paper; I wonder if that swelled the wood and caused my issues?
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Wedge-I think buffed aluminum or similar silvery wedges look best on black scales, while brass looks best with browns, so I went with brass this time. Unfortunately, after I flattened one edge, I let that sharp edge turn into the downward-spinning wheel, and off it zinged, richocheting around the shop! I couldn't find it anywhere, so started over with another one, being much more respectful of the buffers this time! Sadly I didn't quite get it dead flat enough, which you can see in the little gap there. My redneck work-around "fix" involved gluing it up with Hot Stuff thin CA and clamping it to the other scale overnight, which "sort of" worked. (I had already glued and clamped it to the other scale, then drilled the pilot hole, and tested alignment with micro-screws and the blade, so I was able to align it dead-on despite the issue). To me, fitting and shaping the wedge is still the most challenging part of building a razor, but I learn more with each one.
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Pins-NiAg pins with brass collars, and brass bearing washers at the pivot hole. I feel like I'm getting much better at pinning, mainly because I'm actually cutting the pins close enough (which makes all the difference, doesn't it?), and I'm also using a rapid-fire, very short stroke, almost lightly jack-hammering my way around the peen with a polished little brass hammer my machinist son made for me. This works very well for me, and is much quicker too.
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Anyway, in fear of screwing up that wedge even more, I went ahead and pinned it nice and tight before grinding off the excess on the belt grinder my son used for knife-making: 50 grit to start (being VERY careful not to get near the finished scales with it!), then 220 and 320, before hand-sanding and further contouring/rounding and polishing up through the grits to final buffing on Fabuluster, and a final polish on a cotton wheel with no compound.
All in all I'm pretty pleased, as this was only my 7th or 8th total rebuild (after a long hiatus), so I can take what I learned from my mistakes and hopefully not repeat them on the next one. I think I'm going to make my two sons (19 and 22) both a nice straight for Christmas, maybe using scale materials I'm more comfortable with. (I LOVE feathered black horn!).
As for honing this one, I'm waiting on a Chosera 1k I ordered last night from Amazon for a great price, so I can't wait to get this bad boy on that legendary bevel setter! I will report back after I test-shave with it.
And lastly, please fire away with any constructive criticism, as I am obviously still learning the restoration hobby, and really want to improve my techniques with feedback from the masters. Thanks for looking and commenting! Aaron/SHD
