Thread: Help with inherited razors

Well, I was able to get 3 pictures of the same 4 razors from my phone to here. Someone let me know if these are okay or how I improve my photos so you can see what you need to. Thanks!

They loaded fine.

I’ve cleaned up razors with more red rust than yours have with some metal polish and very fine steel wool. It might leave some cosmetic pitting, but that isn’t close to the edge and should have no impact as far as shaving is concerned.

I didn’t see any chips or cracks in the photos. Close ups of the edges would be helpful to see if there is edge damage, but what I see in your pics looks pretty good.

Personal opinion - I'm pretty sure the razors in the photos you sent can be restored to shaving condition. There are SRP members who do excellent restoration work.

If the rest of your collection is in similar condition, you have inherited quite a find.

Thanks bouschie and DZEC. I put these 4 together because they all had BOKER on them. Some of the others are in similar shape to worse shape. I will work on getting some more pics for you. I also have a few hones. One says TONSORIAL GEM A HONE COMPANY MORAVIA IA. Another says SHUMATE ST. LOUIS. And a razor strop that has seen my backside a few(?) times.

Here are close ups of the first four blades.

The red rust needs to come off as soon as possible. A single edge razor blade can scrape most of it off then as said, some steelwool and metal polish will clean it off. Then you will see the pitting left behind.
Most of what you show are in decent shape. Not big money or top collected razors, but not junk. Boker is a good name for sure. Some of us here buy them up.

As far as restoring, you can clean things up yourself but to unpin and clean then repin takes practise. Honing is something you want to send out to have done. If you plan on learning to use a few of these for shaving a "pro honed" edge is a must! You dont want to learn to shave on a edge that is not 100 percent right. To learn to hone "properly" takes a few hundred bucks worth of stones and honing tools and a lot of time. Months or even a year or two depending on the time you can put into learning.

The broken scales can be swapped out so thats not to much of an issue. You could keep them all. Learn to restore from our library and asking questions and learn to shave all at once after sending out a couple for honing. Or just send a couple out as they are. Get them back in good usable shape ready to be used. I recommend the last option. Plus who ever you pic to fix them would most likely be happy to have one or two for the work of fixing one.

Read thru a tiny bit of the "what your working on" thread and you will find folks to ask to restore for you. Leave me out as I just dont have the time.
Good luck and let us know what your plans are and if we can help more.

Originally Posted by hardeeo2020

Thanks bouschie and DZEC. I put these 4 together because they all had BOKER on them. Some of the others are in similar shape to worse shape. I will work on getting some more pics for you. I also have a few hones. One says TONSORIAL GEM A HONE COMPANY MORAVIA IA. Another says SHUMATE ST. LOUIS. And a razor strop that has seen my backside a few(?) times.

My father bought a strop for the same reason. Turns out it is a superior quality Japanese shell leather strop and I’ve been using it for many years. Send a photo of the strop showing it’s full length, any labels or markings and hardware. You never know.

On a related note: Wood-grain tables, colored fabrics, and such are nice to look at, but they add nothing to evaluative photographs of razors; in fact, they make it much more difficult to discern what's-what. My advice? Put a few sheets of plain white paper underneath the razors. You'll be glad you did... and so will we.

Just an idea. If you have any razors that are really far gone, with lots of deep pitting, or any cracks, but have good horn scales, you might want to put the good scales from the bad razor on the second Red Injun, the one with the broken scales. Its a nice razor but the broken scales are begging for replacement and I think better to put some vintage ones on there than new ones.

Either one of the Red Injuns would make a fine first razor for learning to shave with. I would send one out to be honed, just honed and not a full restore. Use it to learn to shave. Let's have a look at your strop. If it isn't badly cracked or checked, it may well be salvageable. Be aware that you will most probably damage your strop while learning, so you might want to buy a sacrificial entry level strop to make all your mistakes on, before slicing and dicing your heirloom strop which being property of a deceased old school barber is quite likely horse shell cordoban, a type of leather prized for making high end strops.

You need to arrest the rusting. A thin film of petroleum jelly works well for that. First knock the surface rust off with some 000 steel wool. There are different types of rust and some will give up their own oxygen ions to the base steel even when the razor is completely cut off from outside oxygen. So steel wool then petroleum jelly and you will have things sort of stabilized. You can get small packs of silica gel cheap on Amazon. Give them a couple hours in a warm oven just to make sure they are totally dry. Bag your razors in zip locks with one or two of these in there and your razors will be in an environment drier than an egyptian tomb. Water, even atmospheric moisture, is the major catalyst for rust. Bringing this up because you have quite a number of razors that need attention and I imagine budget restraints will not allow you to get all of them seen to at once. Now that they have been exposed to the open air again, they are wide open to more rusting. And even protected as I suggest, you still should store them in a dry place.

Razors with celluloid scales should go to the head of the line for restoration, especially if cell rot is already an issue. Cell rot is caused by the outgassing of old celluloid scales causing corrosion of the steel. You will know it when you see it. The heavy pitting will all be on parts of the razor that are in very close proximity to the inner face of the scales. It will be black, not red like common rust. The usual remedy besides sanding and polishing is to replace the scales. Once they start gassing, no manner of sealing or treating will ever completely stop it. This is a crying shame, since some of those old celluloid scales are quite artistic.

Okay, here are some more. The bottom two say "J R TORREY RAZOR CO WORCESTER MASS on them