First restoration: Simmons Hardware #421 Barber's Pet

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce the completion of my first, humble, complete restoration. This has been a long, learning journey (as many of you may know) done entirely my hand sanding.

I bought this razor for $8, a total rust-bucket, on June 20th. I didn't think much of it, and figured it would be a 'learning' item while I waited for a lot of "real" blades to get here.

Two months of handsanding, love, sweat, and tears later, she's a new beauty...in my eyes. I'm sorry to say I have no photo of it "before", since I discounted it at the starting gun. Learned my lesson, I guess. :fim:

Anyhow, it also balances at the tang, and I'll take a picture to prove it if y'all want.

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2...6/IMG_1010.jpg

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2...6/IMG_1011.jpg

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2...6/IMG_1012.jpg



http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2...6/IMG_1014.jpg

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2...6/IMG_1016.jpg

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2...6/IMG_1015.jpg

Very nice, BK. I am very much in the beginner's class and this shows what can be achieved by others who are fresh to the journey. I would be interested to hear of your grit progression; I've been missing out some of the grades with no obvious drawbacks but I have some way to go at the top end.

Congratulations on a fine result.

Dude ! Nice Job , Nice razor. Your efforts are reflected in your results.

And now you deserve a :beer2:

Stunning work. I have 2 of these myself. One is in my regular rotation and i have to say its my favorite. The other just arrived in the mail last week and is awaiting restoration. Enjoy.
G.

Nice work, she looks nice:)

Very nice Ben! Well done!

Thanks to all for taking time to look at this; your comments and critiques are much appreciated.

Lordjohn: For this razor I used something like 80-100-120-150-180-220-320-400-600-800-1000-2000

If I could change anything, I would add 500 and 1500, because I wound up removing a lot of crud at 600 that was invisible until a finer finish. 1000 meshes was just a HUGE jump at the end (although very doable) so a 1500 would be nice. For any specific questions about my technique, I'll have a blog post about this later tonight. (after work...)

Or just PM Max or Glen... I'm just grabbing after the hems of the gods of the restoration Pantheon here. They know everything.

Onimaru- It has felt like after putting on a play, or the death of a loved one: You're there, but not sure where to go next. I think a bacchanal would be about the perfect fix. Or restoring another razor....

Baldy- I'm glad to hear you like your Barber's Pet! When I bought it I had never heard of one, thought it sounded hokey, and didn't connect Simmons and Keen Kutter, so I wasn't sure hoe it would be. I look forward to having this honed and giving it a try!

Deryan + JimR- Thanks! Your opinion means a lot!

What a great finish you've achieved! That must've taken some work. You've got more patience than i have. It centres well too! I'd be pleased with that one!

:rock: Nice tight work, and no doubt a lot of it....

I don't know about Max, but I do know that is exactly how I started restoring razors "By Hand" long hours of aching hands :)

But look what you did man, you actually just saved a piece of history, and made it useful again.... You deserve to be very proud, great job....


ps: (I forget the stupid before pics too)

It seems we ALL tend to forget those stupid before pics. Even after all those restores. hahahahaha

The G made me flash back to my earlier days. Like my brother said, lots of sweat with very basic tools. A copping saw, some sandpaper and a hammer. But although I have a shop filled with all the power tools needed I still spend countless hours hand sanding and finishing my scales. Especially the synthetics :). Basically to get to a high quality finihed product you need patience, hand work and lots of love.

You should be immensely proud of yourself. Your first restored razor will always be one you'll remember.

:tu

First one and great one. just keep it going . You will get better every time you make your next one. Thank you for showing to us.

Beautiful great work on the blade

What a great job for a first restore! Seriously, very well done, you should be proud.

I do want to know a bit about your pinning method though, I do not mean this in any other way than to know more about how you did your resto, and to maybe help out for future jobs, but the pin close up looks like it took some heavy hammer blows.

anyway, really good job!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Del1r1um

I do want to know a bit about your pinning method though, I do not mean this in any other way than to know more about how you did your resto, and to maybe help out for future jobs, but the pin close up looks like it took some heavy hammer blows.

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It did. I used brass rod that I annealed, but my hammer is 8oz. I'm trying to find a smaller one, but so far no luck around here. I had them all domed and shiny, but I rather like the hammered look- so I put it back.

The trick is going to be A.) A lighter hammer
B.) A trained hand, so as to have consistent, small strikes.

Any tips for me? I soooo want to learn.... I'm hooked. Bad.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BKratchmer

It did.
The trick is going to be A.) A lighter hammer
B.) A trained hand, so as to have consistent, small strikes.

Any tips for me? I soooo want to learn.... I'm hooked. Bad.

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Yeah man, I think you nailed it already. A lighter hammer and thousands of tiny taps will do wonders. I'd say that using regular brass rod from the hobby shop, you will not need to anneal it, just tappy tap around the outside. As Glen has said before, if you put your thumb on the anvil and tap it on the nail with your hammer and it causes pain, you are probably hitting too hard.

And as for any other tips, this is pretty much my pinning bible. These are the videos that Alex (philadelph) made, and I have had great success just from trying to mimic what he does here.

By the way, I want you to know that I really think you did a great job on your restore... The pinning would be the icing on the cake as they say, and I know when I started doing resto work that I really wanted people to spot any flaws and tell me about them so that I could learn more. I think you are doing great!

Sweet shaver BK. Can't believe I didn't see this thread earlier. You should feel very proud because that looks SLICK!;)