Thread: Bought a New Vintage -- Now what?

OK, I bought a 9/16, square tip, W. H. Morley and Sons for 30 bucks off of eBay and it arrived today. It looked good, with no visible rust or pitting. Upon examination, that proved to be true -- pretty little razor. The ad said, ambiguously, that it was "well-honed and passed the hanging hair test." Then that was followed by" "needs to be honed". Of those two statements the last one was far more accurate. It failed both the TNT and TPT tests and the hanging hair was like throwing a rope over a power line. So, after cleaning the blade with some alcohol (just in case) I put it on the 12k for about 20 passes, then another 20 on canvas/crox, 30 on canvas, 50 on the strop.

At that point it passed both the TNT and the TPT. It shaved arm hair pretty easily, although I hardly have any from testing my knives. I did a test shave of a bit of my face and it sounded like it was cutting hair, though not much had grown back from this morning, and wasn't uncomfortable. That thin little 9/16 blade is very easy to maneuver, btw.

Next, I looked at the blade under 60 and 120 power lenses. So here's the deal... I can see striations that indicate that whatever the seller used to polish the blade run all the way down the face of the blade and over the bevel (I'm assuming that's why it was dull.) So, asking the experts is my next step. The 20 passes on 12k didn't do much to remove them, so how far does everyone think I should drop back? Incrementally to 8k to see if it improves, then to 4k if it doesn't? Should I drop all the way back to 1k, set the bevel and move up?

You can kind of see the striations on the blade here: