Evolution of a W Greaves&Sons Sheaf Works

It has been a while since I stopped to do any work for myself so I finished up some wood working tonight and decided to dig through my to do project box. I piked up this Greaves razor several months ago. It is a 6/8 wedge with some moderate rust on the blade. The scales are actually in good shape but the entire thing needs depined to properly restore. I do not want to take the W.Greaves&Sons stamp off blade but it needs some extensive work to properly clean the blade. So Gingerly removed the scales and started working.

First it got a scraping to take off the flake rust

A pass on the 180 greaseless compounds to knock off the worst of the rust.

Then the 400 grit to clean it up a little

Then the 600 compound to start cleaning everything up.

Now for the long and tedious part. Hand sanding. It will get a progression of paper starting at 600 grit and going up no less than 8000 grit possibly higher before I start the buffing compound work.

Stay tuned. More to come

Looking good. Cant wait to see your progress.
Grant

well done, nice looking blade.
Please give us an update.

I am in the process of restoring an old Wostenholm pipe and am interested in your progression. Was going to try to do it all on the buffing wheels, but might have to break down and hand sand it as well.

blade looks like its coming along nicely. good luck with the project!

It is all a matter of what you want. You can run all buffing and get perfectly acceptable results, but I am after more than perfectly acceptable. I find that I get better final results when I hand sand after the wheels. I wrap the sand paper around a dowel rod, sit at a table and slowly sand for a few hours. It flattens out and smoothes the steel better which will get you a more mirror like finish verses a nicely polished finish. For that matter, I could pin and hone it after the 600 and it would shave perfectly acceptable. The greesless compounds are the paint sprayer of the process. It does a lot very quickly but the quality is in the details and there is no substitute for hand work. It makes the difference between good and wow.

Man, that looks good. Guess it is off to the store to get some new sand paper. Thanks for the info.

Thats going to be nice! I looove those sheafworks!

Well, another 3 hours with some 600 grit paper and I have an acceptably level and smooth surface to work on. All of the grinding marks are gone from the compounds. The bevel is sanded down an the spine cleaned up. There is still some pitting in one spot on the spine but it would require a lot of metal removal to get it all out. The real key is to get the rust out of the pits so you have clean metal. Now onto the 800 grit for an hour or two.

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Another hour and a half with some 800 grit and the foundation for the polish sanding is in place.

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Another 4 hours and we are up to 1500 grit

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This is an awesome thread. I'm really diggin' the captions as the pictures unfold. Even though we have some great pics in the Wiki of handsanding and so forth, these are a little more specific in terms of the time invested in creating a great outcome. It's one thing to post a pic and say "This is after 600 grit", but it gives everyone a different point of view when its "This is 600 grit after three hours".

I want to be clear that I'm not bashing the work or pictures of others, I just find that this series is really detailing the amount of work involved in hand sanding. This would be a great thread for newcomers to look at, who intend to begin restoring razors.

Thanks very much for these!

Almost there. Gave it another hour with the 2000 then a couple micro mesh pads to most all the striations out. Then It got a 4 compound progression on the buffing wheels and finished up with some hand polishing. Now it is time to turn to the scales. I am going to keep the original black stamped buffalo horn scales. They will get a good scrubbing to clean up all the old shave soap, then a 600-2000 grit wet sand and then finish with the buffing wheels. I usually rescale in new horn/wood/antler/etc... but since this blade is so unique (hard to find one that has not been reground) and the Shef Works stamp on the scales is in good order I am going to keep it original with the exception of the pins. Should look better than new when I get it finished.

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Wet sanded the scales up to 2000 grit. Then they got a heavy wipe (actually 3) in neats foot oil to re-hydrate the buffalo horn. Once the scales had soaked up as much oil as they wanted I cleaned them then gave them a buffing on the wheels to shine them up better than new.

The pins are 1/16 brass rod with brass over stainless washers and brass thrust bearings. The wedge is the original led wedge. I sanded and properly fitted the wedge then pinned it all back together. Looks nice IMHO.

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Excellent work, Beautiful razor.
Congrats

Niiice! :bow

That looks absolutely great, and definately better than new!

Wow awesome job. What buffing compound did you use on the scales?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cannonfodder

It is all a matter of what you want. You can run all buffing and get perfectly acceptable results, but I am after more than perfectly acceptable. I find that I get better final results when I hand sand after the wheels. I wrap the sand paper around a dowel rod, sit at a table and slowly sand for a few hours. It flattens out and smoothes the steel better which will get you a more mirror like finish verses a nicely polished finish. For that matter, I could pin and hone it after the 600 and it would shave perfectly acceptable. The greesless compounds are the paint sprayer of the process. It does a lot very quickly but the quality is in the details and there is no substitute for hand work. It makes the difference between good and wow.

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I've never read Harry Potter through a razor blade before!

Gorgeous!!!!! Simply stunning.