Thread: Wade & Butcher "Celebrated" 8/8

I think you did a great job! who ever would have thought it could look like that without a complete regrind? i'm thoroughly impressed.

Red

Originally Posted by joke1176

I don't think I would have the guts to grind off the maker's mark on the tang, but it sure looks good now.

after killing the active rust and gunk, i was left with this:



I figured..man...is it worth it? and decided NO!!! : )

One of the many forks in the road of a razor man’s career… remove the tarnish along with the stamp… or etch?
Sacrifice one and spare the other… now that was a good call.

Tang stamps or not, it's still unmistakably a Wade & Butcher.
Nice all over save, scales too.

Where was I when you sold that!!!

Red

Originally Posted by Utopian

I don't see anything disappointing with that razor.

Nice job, but the only disappointing was the removing of the shank engravings, but if the pitting here was too bad, then you did the right thing.

Nice job on a great razor. Tang engraving may be gone,but the great W&B shave is still there.

Very nice save Brad !!!!!

What did you use though, inquiring minds want to know???

Brad , sweet work , so glad you preserved the etchings


nice one ... Garry

The tang was taken to a belt sander, and ground off a few hard to get areas using an 8" 100grit grinding wheel. All the pitting was ground off completely, entire tang had newly exposed steel when I was finished. It then went through the entire series of greaseless compounds.

For the blade, I used greaseless compounds on a 6" wheel. I spent a huge amount of time using 80grit..but, knowing that the etching held most of the value of the razor, i spent more time on the toe and heel of the razor to get rid of most of the minor pitting. I may have spent 30+ minutes using 80grit on the reverse side of the blade and the toe and heel of the front, and about 2 minutes on the actual etched portion. When I did 120, 180, and 240 grit compounds, again I concentrated on non-etched portions of the blade. When I hit 400, I did the entire blade equally. I wanted the whole blade to have equal shine, even though I had concentrated on removing pitting everywhere but the etched area. with emory and rouges I again did equal time on entire blade.

I ended up with a very readable etching that had a decent amount of pitting around it, but, an acceptable level, and the finish of the etched area matched the finish of the rest of the razor.

I had to literally scrape the gunk off the inside of the scales. There was a large chunk missing on the pivot end on the reverse side scale, and a crack on the front side scale that didn't reach the pivot hole. so, instead of leaving them both, I decided to shorten the scales by 3/16" or so. This made the chip disappear and the crack *almost* disappear. Once cleaned up I hand sanded down with 400, 600, 1500 so there were no rough edges anywhere, and then buffed.

The original washers were complete junk on the pivot end. mangled before they came into my hands... so I took a pair off another W&B For barbers use blade that I had that had cracked scales. They don't match the other pins, but, I still thought it looked decent and better than new ones would have looked.