Thread: Pre 1890's Wade and Butcher restore. Love it/me or hate it/me.

Soooooo as it says in the book of Ecclesiastes, the end of a matter is better than it's beginning, and truer words have never been spoken in regards to this project.

A month or two ago, I made a thread about warping on scales due to CA glue. I had a lot of helpful responses in that thread, so thank you everyone that contributed. Cangooner really deserves a big thanks here. He spent quite a bit of time with me in private message chats helping me work through some of the problems. I also want to thank gssixgun for putting a wicked edge on this Wade and Butcher.

I know there is a lot of respect for these blades and I tried to not go too crazy. I imagine people will be either in the love camp or hate it camp. Either way, please post your good and bad opinions.

Without further adieu, here's what I got.




The wood is spalted hackberry and oh mylanta it was a bear to work with. The wood is incredibly soft and sanding in any fashion makes wood disappear with the quickness. It isn't very strong either, so I had to take my time with it. I used black and white ebony for the wedge, and put a little notch in it to compliment the barbers notch. The blade etch says Fine India Steel, and the blade closes very well and it shaves like a beast. I'm still learning the do's and don'ts with razor restoration. The peening isn't 100% perfect, and a scrutinous eye can pick up an imperfection or two in the finish. All that aside, I thought about throwing this project out the window and starting over. I'm so happy that it came out looking as nice as it did. It looks even prettier in person

Cheers

Looks great, and nice reference to the Good Book! I hope you get years of great shaves from that W&B.

Looks amazing! Love what you did with the notch on the scales. All in all a really nice looking razor!

Nice job all in all. I love the wood. The spalted wood is alway nice. Also I dig the shape of the scales. The pinning looks nice and uniform! And having worked with CA before I know what a mother it is so props on that!

Regarding the soft nature of the wood.... You may want to try adhering to a .03" g10 liner next time and then once you have the wood glue to the backing thin out the wood on a belt sander so you have the look of the wood, the thinness and strength of the g10.. You can apply blue painters tape to the back g10 side of te scale when applying the ca so the inside of the scales stay clean smooth and polished..... This will allow you to work te material thinner which is aesthetically pleasing IMO. Also the wedge could be thinner if you taper it at more of an angle.

I think you should keep with it, and as awesome as this bad boy came out the next one will probinly be 'awesomer'..... :-)

Enjoy that razor I have the same one and its 'awesomest'

The next time you something like this, and want to "throw it out the window" let me know. I would be delighted to take it off your hands. Looks great.

Great work, Jonah-I love that spalted wood! I have a box full of spalted and burled scale blanks I'm waiting on a local knifemaker friend to stabilize, as well as half a dozen Wade and Butchers I picked up recently, so this is inspiring to me as to what is possible.

Spalted wood is a lot easier to work with if it is stabilized. If you know a knifemaker in your area that can do this for you, it would make working with it a lot easier. Love the look of the wood you used.

I'm in the "love it" camp. I have a W&B I'm making scales for with Spalted Maple. Now I have a chance to see how awesome it'll look!

Very nice work, the spalted wood always looks great! Enjoy!

Looks like a job well done!
That said, I must confess that it was not quite my cup of tea to be honest.
I suppose I'm more of a traditionalist when it comes to scales.
But again, looks very well executed!