Thread: Masonic SR

Like I said, try metal polish and a paper towel.

To get the mirror polish you desire sanding then polishing or buffing wheels is what would be required. Your etch would be affected to one degree or another. The Masonic razors bring good money because of the etch content. To destroy the etch on this blade would greatly devalue the razor.
The advice given by holli4pirating is great advice, this blade would not have been mirrored when new. Metal polish and a paper towel or microfiber towel. Some 0000 steel wool and wd-40 before wouldn't do any damage.
I'd guess your razor to be 1850s to 1880s.

When it comes to etching, the only recommendation I have is the "tumbler" method. I am talking about a vibratory tumbler used for cleaning brass casings for firearms. I would start with walnut media loaded with Flitz for a day or two and then corn media again loaded with Flitz. This way preserves the etching and cleans up blades quite nicely. As mentioned above, this razor never had a mirror polish. Keep it away from buffers as they will most definitely effect the etching.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...mentation.html

In my opinion... Give it a good cleaning with some metal polish like said before, hone it, shave with it..

The only thing it has going for it, is the etch. The rest of the razor has been honed away.

Wade & Butcher razors with that tang stamp date to after 1865 or so (sorry to be vague, but all I can really say is they didn't use it before 1860 and they definitely did after 1870). It likely isn't much newer than the early 1880's, when most of W&B's etches seem to have switched over to a different process that marked much more shallowly.

Most likely, the original surface treatment on these razors was the 'glaze' or frosted finish. In Sheffield terms, a mirror polish was called 'crocus', because it was accomplished using a special grade of iron oxide mixed with bees wax and pasted onto a leather wrapped wheel. The compound was called crocus because it looks exactly like the pollen on the stamens in a crocus flower.

There are about 4 different Wade & Butcher Masonic etches, and this is the most durable of them. I don't know what process they used for it, but it's considerably deeper than the others, and also made from an existing design -- IE it was some sort of transfer process from artwork. The older two designs were done freehand with an etch resist, and the fourth was this same design as this but much more lightly done. This one probably could survive a mirror polish, but you need to be able to do the polishing phase using a hard-backed wheel. The softer the polishing wheel, the more it will smear out the details of the blade.

I use a worn, tightly sewn cloth wheel that has almost no give to it and a high grade jeweler's polishing compound. I wouldn't be confident that would be enough to preserve the design.