Thread: Wade & Butcher medium hollow rehandled in Olive

Greetings everyone,

Here is an eBay razor that I rust finished cleaning up and putting a new handle on. While I was cleaning up the blade, I decided to add my own jimping with a checkering file. I think it will give me a better grip while shaving.

The original scales were in good shape, but since they were just black plastic, I decided to try making my own handle. The new scales are Olive, and the wedge is Cocobolo. Instead of pins, I used barrel pivots with button head torx screws.

I still need to hone the razor, but I thought it would be safer to take pictures beforehand.

That looks great,love that olive wood,nice job.Hey.I never thought about adding jimps,that's a great idea.Would you mind elaborating on it?How did you get the spacing right?How about depth?Did you just eyeball it?If so you did a great job.

I used a checkering file that I got from MidwayUSA. The files are designed to give evenly spaced lines in steel. I seem to recall reading that jimps are supposed to be 40 lines per inch, but the only checkering file I have has 20 lines per inch, so that's what I used. I was surprised to find how soft the steel was where I put the checkering. That made the job pretty easy. To make the jimping wider than the file, you just overlap a few rows and cut some more. As for the depth, I just eyeballed it, but I don't think you can really cut deeper that the teeth on the file. Once I was done, I sanded the jimps lightly so they weren't quite so sharp.

Thank you.I'd never seen one before.My questions sound sorta dopey now!

I too had no idea that's how you could do it. Thank you.

How did you manage to keep the file straight while you did it? It looks like it was made that way, so great job! The scales are beautiful too!

Thanks! I just clamped it in a vise and eyeballed it. I also worked from both sides of the tang, to hopefully minimize any out of perpendicular lines. It seemed to help. I suppose could hold a parallel against the razor is you really wanted to square things up.

Nice razor, Sir!

X

that's awesome!! I love the way you did the jimps. one gripe I really have on some of the customs I've seen is that they are doing it obviously one row at a time you can tell because the spacing isn't perfect and the depth isn't consistent. this looks great. I'm thinking about ordering one of these tonight. I think the 20lpi worked out great, would you say you should have gone higher or that feels/looks good?

Red

Thanks Red! I haven't finished honing the razor yet, but I hope to shave with it either tonight or tomorrow morning. After shaving with it I should have a better idea as to whether 20 lines per inch is enough. (I bought the file to put thumb grooves on knives, but the W&B was the first time I've actually used it.)

Someone asked me how I cleaned up the razor, yet still kept the dark lettering. Actually I didn't; I cleaned off the coloring, then put it back later.

I used a vibratory tumbler, various grits of abrasive paper, and a buffing wheel to clean up the blade. By that time, any coloring was gone from the lettering. I didn't like that, so I used a Birchwood Casey Presto Gun Blue Pen to blue/blacken the lettering. (The link is to Cheaperthandirt, but you can get them at sporting goods and hardware stores.) Of course it gets on the blade around the lettering too, so I used 2000 grit paper to gently remove the excess. The 2000 grit worked pretty well, but it leaves a bit of a mat finish on the otherwise polished blade. It looks pretty good, but I may try some 2500 grit next time. After cleaning up the lettering, I used Windex with Ammonia-D to (hopefully) neutralize any left over bluing solution.