Thread: I just baught a Winchester blade for $4

I went into an antique store today and saw a Winchester straight razor for $4. Its rusty and one of the plastic pieces is cracked but it still felt sharp and looked straight still (no gouges). I have some cocobola wood laying around to make a new handle from. Anyway is it a decent razor? If not I figured it would be something for me to do and attempt to restore it.Heres a picture.The other side is cracked.Where would I find new pins?

You'll be alright unless the pitting around the cutting edge is deep. In that case it will swiss cheese on you when you go to honing. I've seen Glen advise going right to that before you put too much time in it. When you get past the pitting in the edge you'll know if you have something you can use or not.

+1 on Jimmy. Hone the edge to see if there is any pitting and if there is, if you can get beyond that. Worts case, you have something to practice rust removal and honing on. Let us know how it turns out. Good luck!

worse comes to worse maybe a colloector will buy it cheap if you cant make a shaver out of it. im trying to start a gun and razor collection. like lets say my winchester rifle needs a winchester razor. good luck with it.

as for your question about pins
check the forum on restoration to find instructions on setting a pin from rods of various metals.
I've seen one in which the craftsmen used a locking nut of some sort instead of peening over the head of the pin. As far as I know it's like assembling a bike chain, only pretty.

You know that you can lift those half bolsters and put them on the new scales too...
The blade is the important part as Jimmy pointed out, and he is absolutely right, I would advise you at least cut a rough bevel and look at it under magnification before you invest time and effort into a shot blade... Just from the pics (which is not very accurate to say such things) I would guess that the marks are more staining then rust....

Please feel free to join us Tuesday Night in the chat room for the Restore Chat at 8:00pm Eastern time..... We love talking about projects like this..

Well I wet sanded the rust off. The blade seems to be worn down a good 1/8 inch compared to my good razor. It was sharp when I bought it, so I assume someone just used it that much. Anyway since it is a shorter blade when I honed it the blade sharpened at a differant angle than my good one but I tried shaving with it and it worked fine but I could tell it needed a bit more stropping. So I stropped the crap out of it and now I need to wait 2 days to get fuzzy again and give it another go. Once I get the blade dialed in I will mess with the handle. Although a dab of superglue pretty much fixed the crack it would be nice to custom make a handle for it I use to do custom jewlery boxes so I have a bunch of exotic pieces laying around. I will do some research into the pins thanks.

Erik