Thread: 'The Velvet Gilder' Restoration/Modification

Onto the blade. I wish I'd taken some 'before' photos, I never seem to remember. After some laborious sanding to remove the active rust and some of the staining, I was left with this:



The blade had a round point, but it was the roundest point I have ever seen. It looked like a spoon or something. Also, someone had in the past honed into the rounded part so that almost the entire bottom half of the point was bevelled. Weird.
The overly round point looked kinda dorky, so I decided to grind it down a little. Then I though that since I was going to have to do so much work on this blade, why not go the whole hog and make myself a square point razor?
I ground the point down on my bench grinder. This is ok to do if you take great care. I dipped it in water before and after every grind, and I held it in contact with the wheel for less than a second each time. It took ages to remove the metal by this method, but I wanted to avoid heat buildup. It was still risky, but it worked fine, not a hint of colour change and the blade didn't even get hot enough to evaporate the water.

After a lot of sanding to smooth things out and remove the grinding marks, I ended up with this:



I still have a lot of sanding to do, you can see thee pitting in the following photos. I don't know if I'll manage to get them all out of this thin blade, but I'll do better than this. I actually used a coarse abrasive stone on the tang because the pitting was so deep. It worked very well and it didn't take long to sand out the marks that the stone left.

Now I have a dilemma. I am going to cast my own scales in resin for this blade, but I can't decide between black or ivory colour. I have posed the blade with one of each. I am wavering slightly towards the ivory, but opinions are welcome. Please excuse the rough appearance of the scales, they are casting rejects. I'll be casting some proper ones once I have decided on the colour...