Thread: Frederick Reynolds for my Barber

Greetings everyone,

Last month I brought one of my razors to the barber shop so that my Barber, Lou, could use it on my neck and around my ears. He thought it was pretty cool, so he showed me that he had a whole box of razors. Apparently, many of his customers end up with old razors and just give them to Lou. No fair!

Anyway, he had some decent ones in his box that I thought I could fix up, so I took three home with me. The nicest one was a 7/8 Crown & Sword. It was a mostly just gunked up, but the handle was pretty warped too.

Another was a Bengall that Lou liked. The blade wasn’t too bad, but when I got it home I realized that the horn scales didn’t belong on the razor and were actually too big for it.

The third one was an old Frederick Reynolds. It was rusty, heavily pitted, and the horn scales were trashed. Those ended up being some of the least of its problems. (It kind of reminded me of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. )

In this thread, I’ll show you what I did with the Frederick Reynolds.

When I took apart the Reynolds, I realized that the edge was way off center and the monkey tail was bent.

I considered heating it up and trying to straighten it, but I decided I wouldn’t be able to do it without ruining the temper. Then I’d have to re-heat treat it. Since it’s not my razor, I didn’t want to risk it. I decided I would leave it as it was, unless it caused problems later (and it did).

I started hand sanding the blade and quickly realized that it was so deeply pitted that it would take me forever. Therefore, I decided to regrind the blade. It’s actually my first regrind on a straight razor, but I think it came out pretty well. I recently but a VFD on my Bader BIII, so I was able to slow the belts down to a crawl. I used a ten inch contact wheel, which worked out well. I got some nice Norax belts from Tracy Mickley, and took it down to 1,300 grit. I think the blade looks pretty good. It was a little nerve racking at first, but that sure is a heck of a lot easier that hand sanding for hours and hours.