Wade & Butcher 8/8

Nice old Wade & Butcher restore with custom scales. The blade was in some pretty pitted shape. Took much hand sanding to get it all dealt with and back to a mirror shine. Blade is a healthy 8/8. a few very minor nick's in the blade to hone out this evening and then a proper test shave in the morning! the scales are made of spawlted dogwood with a tung oil and ren wax finish. I was able to recover the domed washers and repeen with then. A bit of hammer and a fine point should roll out the bent edges of them. the wedge is Cambodian Rose wood.

Good job, huge difference start to finish. :tu

When I started looking at this, my eye was immediately taken to the scales and the fact that the wedge does not fit very well. There are two problems that stick out - one is that it is not really a wedge, it's a spacer and the fact that it is not flush against the scales.

The whole point of a wedge is to create a bow shape in the scales so that the blade fits without catching along the tang. You could still use what is there but you need to shape it properly and then, when it's fitted, sand it down so that scales and wedge are even. The scales are a good shape so I think a couple of adjustments will make them much better.

I hope you don't think this is overly critical - I'm trying to help.

The wedges always seems to be the thing that gives us new guys the most trouble. My first wedge took me four tries. On the third one, the belt sander grabbed it out of my hand, and I just yelled "screw it!", I'm done for the night. Came back the next day, and got a good one...not perfect, but good, getting it flush with the scales is a real PITA sometimes, more so if the inside of the scales are not perfectly flat. Keep at it, and they get better with each set. Your imagination is your limit, and I do like to make and see some funky designs and materials mated w/ each other. To me it gives each and every razor its own "character" so to speak.

Don't mind at all!I had done 3 other wedges for it at a much steeper angle. It however made the scales bow too far. Tho it does not look much like it in the pic's the wedge is actually wedge shaped. With no blade in the scales the wedge produces about 1.5" gap at the pivot side. If you check some of my other posts you will see I generally make my wedge/scales fit very snug. this one however is to go into my rotation. I personally enjoy razor's that are lacking perfection. that is why there is no shine on the scales and the washers are not buffed to a polished shine and are still rough around the edges. Normally I don't even bring the blade up to mirror. I leave it as is with a bit of cleaning. This one however had very little character or patina so I decided to bring it all the way back to life. at some point if I decide to remove it from my case I will rescale it into something that is a bit more mainstream. I do however thank you so kindly for being so frank! It is hard to grow skill at something like this when most posts are about how good something is and doesn't touch on the flaws!

Very impressive razor. Great restoration!