Thread: take a close look at this

i'm perplexed by this ebay purchase...has the right name, had several other bidders...doesn't look right or feel right to my admittedly untutored eye. the stamping is not clean and crisp, the little ridges (and I know there's a name for them) are muddled, the blade appears to be plated and not very well polished underneath the plating, the wedge is loose and the thing feels a little light in the hand. what do you think. and i'm annoyed that my $1000 canon with the fast lens can't go in on this, and when i blow it up in photoshop i get 18 megabit images which i'm sure no one appreciates.

From the pics, it appears to be a poor example of resurfacing with abrasive buffs. Look at the steel through magnification and see if you can see a good bit of depth to the grind marks on the blade's face. Factory grind marks are very shallow on good quality razors, whereas the abrasive buffs tend to leave deeper marks. Grind marks also hide damages, such as small pitted spots, light surface pitting, etc, so examine that closely as well.

Originally Posted by RazorTalkin

From the pics, it appears to be a poor example of resurfacing with abrasive buffs.

I agree. It appears to have been heavily buffed. How poor of an example, depends on what the razor looked like originally.

As for blowing up your images in Photoshop... Feel free to PM me if you need help resizing or enlarging anything; there's no reason that an enlargement has to have huge pixel dimensions.

under a loupe you can see how the plating flowed into all the letters. the little ridges are battered and the blade is pitted. the seller takes returns so i contacted him. too bad for me. i've seen the name Boker bandied about here and was psyched to get one.

Originally Posted by Noisykids

under a loupe you can see how the plating flowed into all the letters. the little ridges are battered and the blade is pitted. the seller takes returns so i contacted him. too bad for me. i've seen the name Boker bandied about here and was psyched to get one.

Plating is an unusual method of restoring an old straight razor. I too would ask for a refund. You can find another good Boker with a little patients. Find a good example and you'll have yourself a nice shaver that will last a lifetime. Good Luck!

Looks like someone who knows little about straights decided to do a cosmetic restore and really went to town with a buffer on that one. I would pass on that.

Hold on. First, I highly doubt that plating was done. That seems like a lot of effort for little return. Instead, what you perceive as plating is as others have stated, is incomplete buffing. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Not every razor can be made pristine. If deep pitting is present, sometimes all you can do is shine up those pits. I've done that. You buff away the active rust and polish it up a little. There's no point taking it close to mirror and the reality is that the more you polish it the more pronounced the pitting will appear.

Cosmetically, it may not be a great razor. It's still a Boker so it still can be a great shaver. I don't know what you paid for it, but I would state my case to the seller and offer what I consider to be a fair price given the razors actual condition. The seller can take it or leave it. To avoid hassles, odds are he'll take it and refund the difference.

Originally Posted by Utopian

Hold on. First, I highly doubt that plating was done. That seems like a lot of effort for little return. Instead, what you perceive as plating is as others have stated, is incomplete buffing. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Not every razor can be made pristine. If deep pitting is present, sometimes all you can do is shine up those pits. I've done that. You buff away the active rust and polish it up a little. There's no point taking it close to mirror and the reality is that the more you polish it the more pronounced the pitting will appear.

Cosmetically, it may not be a great razor. It's still a Boker so it still can be a great shaver. I don't know what you paid for it, but I would state my case to the seller and offer what I consider to be a fair price given the razors actual condition. The seller can take it or leave it. To avoid hassles, odds are he'll take it and refund the difference.

If THIS is the same razor, then my theory on abrasive buffs & grind marks appears to be off base altogether. In these photos the blade appears to have an unnatural shine and no visible grind marks. Maybe it has been plated? The pitting doesn't appear to be severely deep....perhaps it needs to be refinished properly.

Look at his last sale



Look familiar???

Here are some hints at buying razors on e-bay...

There are very very very few quality sellers on there and all 4 that I know of are members here too
You should stay the heck away from e-bay until you have enough experience with razors not to have to ask about whether they were a good buy

Either way this was done "Buffing" or "Plating",,, and I can't tell which could have killed the temper of the razor... (I doubt Plating)
There is a very delicate balance between restoration and wrecking a razor... in fact that balance can switch in less than 1 second on a buffer with a hollow grind...
BTW look at the pins on both razors, they look in the pics to have been popped and replaced so he has to have some knowledge of razors...

With an E-bay name like GunGuy he can't be all bad though and maybe he does know about how far to take a razor and you might have a good shaver there...

I agree with Glen, Ebay is always a crap shoot, and if you don't know a lot about razors, you can get burned..Thank God for paypal...Your better off sticking to our classifieds here...I don't think it's a plating... so he must have sanded/buffed the hell out of it, and you'll know when you shave or try to hone it if he over did it.....I had a blade that was overheated, and in turn it was impossible to get a good edge on it...

I like the etching on the blade, it looks like a nice razor, let's us know how it shaves.....Are you sure the lettering isn't messed up from sanding...? When razors are pitted and you restore them, Guys basically sand them to get it out, and clean it up before buffing....