Thread: Joseph Smith & Sons cleanup

picked this up a bit ago at an antique store , was gonna wait till i got my buffer and wheels but said the heck with it and just kept hand sanding ... still could have been sanded better but seems how i just wanted to knock off some rust and remove some pitting it is good enough for me ..

before






scales only had a few scratches and one bite and were uneven at the pivot end ... i sanded out the deep scratches from 325-2000 grit as well as evened them up ... there was no wedge( the horn was cut to provide its own wedge, dont know if there ever was one though , but i should have made one ... ) so the blade dosent set as low as i would have liked it to do to the scales being narrow where the blade sits (least i think thats the problem )
continued in next post

after tearing the razor down , blade seemed flat and away i went with the sand paper , got it to where i was happy , finished the scales a bit more with a bit more sanding and a good wipe down with Neatsfoot oil and it was ready to peen ...

aaahhhh the final process !!!! to the hones i went !!

and that is where it all went down hill ... my hone skills get better and better as time goes on but my wedge and heavy blades seem to always have been my strong point ( i had a heavy hand at first and that seemed to be my results ..lol ) but with this blade what appeared to be flat ended up being warped !!! uuuggghhh , i couldnt hone this thing to save my life .. i experimented trying to roll the blade through stroke from toe to heel & heel to toe on the back stroke , no luck , tried about anything and everything else , still couldnt get it ... so as usual i logged on here and saw a smaller hone may help me ....

hhhmmmm , smallest thing i have are barber hones , ill try it ... so knowing by feel ( more of a guess for me ) i started with my most coarse - finest and finally got an edge ...

1)carborundum #118s ( if i remember right , it had it marked in a beautiful indian head but after the back was chipped i lapped it and lost the head ... still kickin myself ..

2) celebrated barber hone

3) champion barber hone

4) pike/swaty
and finally 100+ laps on the leather ..
it still needs more work as i found out after during a shave , but never trying to hone a warped blade before i couldnt even set a bevel or cut a hair off of the nani/nortons , so i will save it for another day as i think it is close but i need some more experience before i get this one where it needs to be !!

Looks fantastic! I'm sure you'll get an edge on it, just keep plugging away. Nice razor, love the scales too!

Originally Posted by maddafinga

Looks fantastic! I'm sure you'll get an edge on it, just keep plugging away. Nice razor, love the scales too!

other than that one little bite they are near perfect ..!! ive been leary of working on horn scales ever since i broke a set one time .. thanks again !

Looks good, gooser! Really Good! Man, those barber's hones ain't gonna get it, FME. Two layers and lightly on the DMT. Get that old stuff off the edge, changing the outer layer frequently. If the bevel is too big, add another layer. Once she gets a bit sharp, go to the 1000 and spend an evening, rocking and rolling. It will come around, soon enough!
Hang in there!

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Looks good, gooser! Really Good! Man, those barber's hones ain't gonna get it, FME. Two layers and lightly on the DMT. Get that old stuff off the edge, changing the outer layer frequently. If the bevel is too big, add another layer. Once she gets a bit sharp, go to the 1000 and spend an evening, rocking and rolling. It will come around, soon enough!
Hang in there!

i actually went to a DMT 325 with 3layers after a ton of time on the 1k with no results thinking i could take off enough to at least get a good bevel but i thought that was 2 low so i didnt want to do to much ( lack of knowing ) the barber hones came into play after i messed around on that 118s and was more or less push the toe towards me and then push the heel on my away stroke and was able to take hair off at skin level , but ididnt think going back to the 1k or 4/8 was gonna get me anywhere so i just kept runnin with the barber hones with hopes of hitting .5 paste and alot of leather afterwards would work ....lol.. this has my mind goin now thinking a small natural stone might be fun to have around for situations like this because i got futher then no where on a smaller stone ( or a mental excuse to buy one at least )...lol.. i know for sure more reading is in hand ...lol

You did a fine job on the restoration, great work, the two middle barber hones look awfully rough to me. If you have a good bevel i would go back to 4k/8k untill you get a good shaving edge at that level. Your having a blast arent you?

One man's nightmare, another man's Blast! At least you have a good attitude, gooser!
4 layers ain't unheard of, ya know!