Thread: my first shot at restoration ....

What I do is start with a 240 grit and move to 400, 800, 1500. I rinse and keep the metal clean as often as I can. When I start the 1500 grit I just put on some mothers mag and aluminum polish as I'm sanding. Not too sure it does a whole lot but it's the way I have always polished, even my snowmobile aluminum tunnels. Then just wax on and wax off using fast Hand strokes with the blade pinched between your fingers. I will rub the blade down with mothers using my fingers until the polish starts to get dark then waipe clean. Repeat as many times as you can handle, LOL it takes awhile when you do it by hand.

Originally Posted by jtzx12

What I do is start with a 240 grit and move to 400, 800, 1500. I rinse and keep the metal clean as often as I can. When I start the 1500 grit I just put on some mothers mag and aluminum polish as I'm sanding. Not too sure it does a whole lot but it's the way I have always polished, even my snowmobile aluminum tunnels. Then just wax on and wax off using fast Hand strokes with the blade pinched between your fingers. I will rub the blade down with mothers using my fingers until the polish starts to get dark then waipe clean. Repeat as many times as you can handle, LOL it takes awhile when you do it by hand.

I also stay away from doing any circular are change direction when sanding until I am at the 800 grit stage.

Thanks for this help, I'm in the UK and have a product called MAAS, would this do the same job? Can you also elaborate on the wax on wax off comment.
Thanks

Originally Posted by Anthony1954

Thanks for this help, I'm in the UK and have a product called MAAS, would this do the same job? Can you also elaborate on the wax on wax off comment.
Thanks

MAAS is an excellent product for polishing the blade, a somewhat clean rag and some MAAS and rub the entire blade.

Originally Posted by Martin103

MAAS is an excellent product for polishing the blade, a somewhat clean rag and some MAAS and rub the entire blade.

The Maas is a great polish. I use it with my Dremel & it comes out looking like fantastic!

Originally Posted by Anthony1954

Thanks for this help, I'm in the UK and have a product called MAAS, would this do the same job? Can you also elaborate on the wax on wax off comment.
Thanks

MAAS is a great product as well, I have heard of a lot of people using that as well. The wax on wax off is just a reference to the movie Karate kid .. lol just rub the polish on with your fingers rub it in a bit and rub off the polish with clean towel. When the towel gets dirty move to a clean part of the towel. There is some great videos on YouTube by Maggard razors, if I were you I would watch all 12 videos Brad is great at explaining everything step by step ... He even has posted a video where he hand polishes a razor. Good luck, and watch your fingers ! Lol I got bit a couple times the only other advice I would say is take your time sanding. It makes a huge difference in the end. Practice and time makes the difference and I still have a lot to learn and try to pick up different sizes of blades in various conditions to practice on, if I have learned one thing it's you can polish a turd, but it's still a turd. Hope that helps !

Many thanks for your time and patience really impressed with the blades you showed at the start of this post. Mine look clean after sanding but slightly dull so obviously I need your final stage. I've managed to locate some Mothers so that's on it's way.
Regards
Tony

The blades look great, hopefully they shave as well as they look!

Out of curiosity, did you purchase the blades without any scale, or did you remove the scales for the restoration process?

I've tried making a couple of old blades shine using "Peek" metal polish and this worked great for removing light rust and any tarnish or patina, but I could not get the area around the pivot pin, because I'm not comfortable removing and replacing scales yet. It is on my bucket list to make a set of wood scales from scratch one day...

Originally Posted by shallard

The blades look great, hopefully they shave as well as they look!

Out of curiosity, did you purchase the blades without any scale, or did you remove the scales for the restoration process?

I've tried making a couple of old blades shine using "Peek" metal polish and this worked great for removing light rust and any tarnish or patina, but I could not get the area around the pivot pin, because I'm not comfortable removing and replacing scales yet. It is on my bucket list to make a set of wood scales from scratch one day...

thanks !! Yeah they had scales on them however the were cracked or broken so I had to remove them needless to say I wasn't really careful ... I'm thinking about buying a dremel to cut the pins and see how well it will polish up the blades. That's my next plan is to make a set of scales and see how I do !! Good luck

Nice job on the polishing, just thaught I'd throw in a vote for Simichrome as an excellent hand polising compound.