Thread: Razor Lemonade: Or, how I restored a badly rusted razor.

In the beginning, I had this:




With a buffer and a lot of patience I might well have been able to polish it up to a mirror shine with some nasty pits near the toe. Really though, it was never going to be beautiful. Never, ever, ever. The scales are completely destroyed (though I kept them, knowing it would be useful for experiments on translucent horn).

Likewise I had a set of bone scales that had absorbed an incredible amount of rust. They too were unlikely ever to be lovely again.

I thought: why not turn faults into virtues?

I came up with this:







It isn't sharp yet, I just gave it enough passes on the hone to see how the line would look. (It's going to take a lot of work to get it sharp, being a great big old wedge with some fairly nasty dings).

The pins are peened microfasteners, partly because I wanted the chunky industrial look and partly because I'm also pondering doing custom bone scales and I figured it'd be easier to get these off if I used adjustable screws (even peened).

The blade I attacked with phosphoric acid, a heavily patinated sheet of copper, sulphured salts, water, heat and a novel method for fume bluing.

See, I didn't have any good ways of keeping the acid in the bottom of the container warm. So I had a flash of perverse brilliance.

My computer is water-cooled and has a gigantic radiating tower that vents air upwards. To warm the acid and make sure that the blade got good and acid-vapored, I set my computer to rendering a really intensive 3d scene (one that it would keep doing effectively in perpetuity), set the container on top of the radiator and went to bed.

It worked!

The effect I was after was an extremely mottled patina to match the hideous craters in the blade. It is now pretty much the scariest looking razor I own.

I can hardly wait to shave with it!

I like it, looks like a murder weapon.
Will the rust continue to kreep or did the acid fumes stop it where it was?

Those are the coolest bone scales I've ever seen, I think it would be a shame to get rid of them for a newer set. Nice work.

I took a Friedmann & Lauterjung 'Electric' home from an antique show where the blade was the same color - though no splotches. I shined it up, and in hindsight, liked the dark better. 'Hope this one turns out to be a fine shaver as well. 'Handsome work.

What a great idea. That is a nice piece of work that looks fantastic. Very classy and seasoned. I like it a lot.

Nice patina & the scales are a good contrast.

Originally Posted by Mastershake

I like it, looks like a murder weapon.
Will the rust continue to kreep or did the acid fumes stop it where it was?

The first run-in with the naval jelly lifted all the rust out of the deep pits, I'm pretty sure. All that's left on it is quite hard black patina (with some brown and multi-colored stuff mixed in subtly from the weird stuff I did to it).

Originally Posted by chay2K

Those are the coolest bone scales I've ever seen, I think it would be a shame to get rid of them for a newer set. Nice work.

Yeah... I would really like to know how to get that effect on purpose with bone. I've got a project to make my own scales with it, but I'm really busy with a bunch of other stuff and I haven't had a chance to get everything I need.

My plan is to cut down a chew-toy bone from the pet store, get it in the shape of the scales and then soak it in really rusty water for a few days. Then I'll soak it in neatsfoot oil, then polish it. I think that'll get me something similar to these, since I'm pretty sure that's how this set ended up looking the way it does. But the other bone scales I have I don't seem to be able to get to that kind of translucent luster, so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree...