Restoration mega project: Joseph Rodgers 7 day set
These razors are JMS’s. This restoration project took me more than 7 months. These blades were in a very bad state, and some parts of the steel were just plain rotten.
http://msmvps.com/cfs-file.ashx/__ke...00_before.jpeg
On top of that there were a couple of complications. First of all, in a 7 day set, you expect the razors to have the same size, shape and grind. Because of that, I had to leave a couple of pinprick pits in the blade. Grinding them away would mean that some blades would end up 4/8 wedges, while others would be 11/16 hollow ground.
Aside from that, these razors cam with 1 set of scales which would fit the tang via a locking mechanism. The lock was still in very good condition, and fitted the razors very snugly. This meant that I could not sand away the (sometimes very bad) pitting on the tang, or the razors would simply not lock to the scales anymore.
These razors were pretty hard for being old sheffields. Grinding away the rot took a very long time.
I finished the first one from start tom finish by hand to get some feeling for how the razors would react. After that I spent some time developing a prototype low RPM ‘el cheapo’ electrical sander. Using that, I sanded razors 2 – 7 concurrently, finshing them all on one particular grit, and then going to the next.
I’ll be making a separate thread on the specifics of that sanding machine. The thing that is important now is that it was cheap -> low quality. By the time I got to 400 grit, the engine was overheating after 20 minutes, and the plastic gearbox was in a bad shape. The sander did its job, but it still took a very long time to get to 1000 grit.
From there it was about 1 hour polishing with chromium oxide per razor.
If I say so myself, the results are very good. I had to be very careful with the spines, since that shape is pretty tricky to work with. Because of that I decided to removed only the rust and rot, but left the pitting there. And I only sanded the tangs very lightly and then polished them.
The tangs on the pictures still look dirty, but those are visual effects from the light on the bad pitting. The tangs are polished, but still pitted.
http://msmvps.com/cfs-file.ashx/__ke...ter_5F00_1.jpg
http://msmvps.com/cfs-file.ashx/__ke...ter_5F00_2.jpg
Now I have to admit, when I took out JR1 today to make the pics, I was disappointed with the fact that I could still see a couple of scratch lines. I'll be polishing it again, so technically I am not 100% ready. And I still have to hone them all. But after I finished JR7 I really felt like finally posting the pictures so that Mark finally has proof that it was worth the long wait.
The price per razor was really on the cheap side (no even considering the consumables that went into this project) but we agreed up front that 'as long as it takes' really means what it says.
