Thread: Museum style resto

I can definitely appreciate your desire to simply make the razor functional and leave its age showing. I personally would never toss functional original scales, restore over replace every time for me. This particular blade has a bit more damage than I'd try to tackle myself but it came out with a lot of personality. good work.

Sorry, not a fan either...

Two reasons
One, you already did enough restoration to make it not a "Museum piece" so that sorta blows that theory..
Two, I would never ever in a million years stick a sharp piece of dirty rusty steel on my face, you guys are daredevils, to me, and I am not a germ-a-phobe, but that is like going to the doctor and having him use an old needle to give me a shot or going to the dentist and have him use antique tools with rust and patina in my mouth.. "Tattoos with a rusty needle done here"..
Nope I have seen what that black stuff looks like under magnification, and you all can have them all, I don't care what you guys say that thing would never shave my face... and please don't even tell me "But the edge is clean"

Hmmmmmm maybe that's why I started restoring razors in the first place

Now if it were going to go in a display that is different, but then I would have just stabilized it against further degradation and sealed it up to look at...


Hint: From a gun nut, you really don't want to store that in leather, more guns have been destroyed that way than any other

Hmmmm... why isn't there a "not like" button... [shoots meanie eyes at Glen]

I love a razor with tarnish and pitting. The bubbly black tar (devil spit) on the spine I absolutely abhor, but I love the character of a blade's life preserved. I have a newish Dovo 6/8 "Best Quality" that attained some assymetrical staining (more on one side) from my 40+ minute shaves early on which I intend to keep as a record of my learning curve. Just a touch of MAAS to remove any trace of reactive oxidation, just to be sure. But not enough work to remove completely.

Originally Posted by AxelH

Hmmmm... why isn't there a "not like" button... [shoots meanie eyes at Glen]

I love a razor with tarnish and pitting. The bubbly black tar (devil spit) on the spine I absolutely abhor, but I love the character of a blade's life preserved. I have a newish Dovo 6/8 "Best Quality" that attained some assymetrical staining (more on one side) from my 40+ minute shaves early on which I intend to keep as a record of my learning curve. Just a touch of MAAS to remove any trace of reactive oxidation, just to be sure. But not enough work to remove completely.

Daredevil !!!!

But as always the bottom line is, it isn't my razor, it is Legion's and he can do what he wants with it...

I don't very much like 200 years old razors to be mirror polished, unless one is going to use it for shaving. That polish ruins antique image of the razor. Some oldies should be only cleaned. There is enough younger blades for customs and different kind of restorations, which I like very much.

This razor is almost 200 years old. Look at the pins, scales. That's real antique. I'm not sure that it should be restored. Even very professional restoration. For restoration I can send two-three younger blades, at least 50-70 years younger.

If it is at all possible to keep a razor in it's original condition, I will. I have a 3-bin set of drawers that I store all my to be honed/restored razors in. The top drawer is 'hone' only. The second drawer is for razors that have a little bit of rust or funk on them, and just need a little bit of cleaning. The third drawer is for razors with busted scales and rusted/pitted blades. I try to keep the top drawer as full as possible, and the bottom as empty. I don't want to feel as if I am defiling history by cleaning a razor that doesn't REALLY need it, but that's just me!

I think that razor looks great. To me, polishing that to a mirror would be like taking the statue of liberty back to a penny-brown copper. Perhaps that's what she looked like many years ago, but she wears her green well as an older lady.

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. Whatever one's thoughts are on the degree to which something should be restored, I don't think there's much doubt that you did a top-notch job with what you intended to do.

After reading this thread, I realized that I have several old pitted razors on display, not as extreme as this one. I am reminded of a recent post where the poster got one which was perfectly rusted and made it look awesome! I, personally, would not come close to shaving with any of them, but I suppose it would be ok! We DO shave with the edge and not the face of the blade!(I Hope!) I would use Comet with bleach and an old toothbrush!

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Sorry, not a fan either...

Two reasons
One, you already did enough restoration to make it not a "Museum piece" so that sorta blows that theory..
Two, I would never ever in a million years stick a sharp piece of dirty rusty steel on my face, you guys are daredevils, to me, and I am not a germ-a-phobe, but that is like going to the doctor and having him use an old needle to give me a shot or going to the dentist and have him use antique tools with rust and patina in my mouth.. "Tattoos with a rusty needle done here"..
Nope I have seen what that black stuff looks like under magnification, and you all can have them all, I don't care what you guys say that thing would never shave my face... and please don't even tell me "But the edge is clean"

Hmmmmmm maybe that's why I started restoring razors in the first place

Now if it were going to go in a display that is different, but then I would have just stabilized it against further degradation and sealed it up to look at...


Hint: From a gun nut, you really don't want to store that in leather, more guns have been destroyed that way than any other

I see your point, and I understand. I think the razor should be pretty safe from germs. It has been sanded, then polished with Autosol, then Brasso. Brasso contains a fair percentage of ammonia, which will kill all the bugs (I hope).

I'm not planning to store it in the leather permanently. It will be in one of the boxes with all my other razors. I just thought it would look nice as an "accessory" which would look kind of period to the piece. I might make some more for travel purposes, though. They protect the razor quite well and "one size fits all". A lot of my razors have custom scales, so they would not fit in the travel cases commercially available.