Thread: Restoration guidence

My Grandfather owned a barber shop for many years across from the Varsity in Atlanta. It was called the Yellow-jacket. I just recently came into possession of several of his straight and safety razors and a strop. They probably are not worth a lot of money but they are priceless to me. I was looking at sending them off to be restored but in reading some of the posts here I am gaining confidence to restore them myself. Not just for aesthetics but I would like to actually shave with them. Can someone either direct me to a link or give me some steps to take and recommend products to start the process? Rubbing compounds, grit, scale cleaning. A couple are extremely pitted and probably cannot be restored but others aren't terribly bad. Thank you all in advance!

Greg

Post some close-up pics. We would need to see the shape they are in before we can get you started. BTW, Welcome to SRP! You have come to the right place.

Hello Greg, Welcome to SRP!
A very common question , for sure. So I am passing on the first place to look for such information:
Shave_Library
That will, at least, help you to know the words when you search further and give you a simple way to start your restorations..
Another area there in Library is "Local Help." That is a listing of some folks that it would be handy to meet and enjoy what they have learned.
Again, Welcome!
~Richard

You got some good advice, so I'll just say welcome to the forum. Nice to have another member nearby.
I'm just North OTP. I need to visit Varsity sometime. I hear hear they have the best onion rings

Originally Posted by JP5

You got some good advice, so I'll just say welcome to the forum. Nice to have another member nearby.
I'm just North OTP. I need to visit Varsity sometime. I hear hear they have the best onion rings

Hey neighbor. I think its a requirement, a right of passage, for all Georgia residents to go to the Varsity. If you go quickly I will not report you! LOL

Welcome to SRP, Greg. You are lucky to have some nice heirloom razors from your grandfather. The fact that they are heirlooms makes them special. Some of us will never have the chance to own and use razors like that. These look in good shape for the most part and most of them don't look like they need too much to get shaving again. Really nice Wostenholm IXL there And a couple of very clean looking hollow grinds too.

Just go easy and try not to do something you can't undo just for the sake of "restoration". For example, you could could polish up the scales on the Wosty and repaint the letters... but you might also think "hey that was grandpa's hands that put the wear on them" and leave them as is.

Well in my opinion, id say the 4th one, faux bamboo scales, is going to need some work. Looks like some rust on the edge. When rust gets on the edge it could cause lots of steal to be removed in a honing process.

Id start all of them with some 0000 steal wool and WD40 for lube while scrubbing with the steal wool. See what is left as far as pitting and rust. The more hollow blades are normally too thin to try to take out the pitting as the steal is too thin and you could mess with the geomitry of the blade. After the steal wood and wd40 then use the steal wool with some metal polish and i bet you will have some nice looking blades. Good enough to have honed and use.

The firzt one looks to be a near wedge so it has more steal in it but you still need to strat with scrubb8ng to see if any bad spots are hidden.

Now this is just my opinion. Id wait to see what other more experianced restorers have to say before diving in.
Nice pics by the way. The DE needs some hand polishing with a rag and polish.use something sharp and pointy to pick the green stuff out of the tiny areas. Be careful not to bend the teeth on the DE. And when you think you have polished enough, do it one more time. Ha. It should come out shinny brass. The handle on that DE can crack if its not cracked already but that is fixable. You got some nice stuff for starting a collection.

You are quite lucky.
They do not seem to need much. A light hand polish and a honing and they should be good to go. If you want to learn to shave with s straight razor, you should buy an inexpensive shave ready blade, perhaps from the BST section of the forum, and by doing so you can get all of your learning errors done on something other than your heirlooms.

Those are some beauts!
If you do a search there is one member that discussed how to fill in the gold lettering on the scales that had worn off.