Thread: is that blood...

Ever get an e-bay razor with dried blood on it?

I ended up with a nice (enough) C-Mon Special from the bay, little chip near the toe and a bit of a wave in the scales but for the price I'm pretty stoked.

The other night I was refreshing a few razors and figured I'd give the new acquisition a quick once over on the hones to assess it's immediate future.

I had noticed some brown gunk (for lack of a better word) on the inside of one of the scales and thought nothing of it. I have had a few old blades pass through my hands and some old scummy gunk on the scales is not extraordinary by any means so I ignored it as the full cleaning is in the future.

After a few passes on the hones and a dip in the water ... have I cut myself honing???

Blood on the hand... a wipe on a towel and a quick look for the offending gash yields nothing

The razor is bleeding ... looks like the brown gunk inside the scales is dried blood... looks like more than I personally think a shaving cut would account for...

Anyone else ever end up with a bloodied blade off the bay?

(I'll try to find my camera and post a picture as I didn't clean it yet)

When I got this one, I was pretty sure it had been put away with quite a lot of blood on it:



The problem with that theory though is that the reason blood is red is because it has iron in it. Over a long enough time-frame, it becomes increasingly difficult visually to tell the difference between blood and rust.

On the other hand, there are definitely people out there that like to cut themselves and have done so with straight razors.

No doubt some of the straight razor "finds", be it ebay, antique shops, etc. may have a bit of blood mixed in with the gunk between the scales. The first thing I do with the fixer uppers is run them under the hot water
faucet and using just dish soap and an old toothbrush clean them as much as possible being careful of the edge.
Dry them with a paper towel and use compressed air to dry between the scales especially at the pins. Then I begin to take a look and see what is next in the recovery.

Looks like a basic rust stain to me. Don't be afraid to take a toothbrush and a bit of toothpaste to this. Give it a nice bath, then dry it thoroughly. It's all going to need polishing anyway.

Originally Posted by stimpy52

Looks like a basic rust stain to me. Don't be afraid to take a toothbrush and a bit of toothpaste to this. Give it a nice bath, then dry it thoroughly. It's all going to need polishing anyway.

Oh, that one had some pretty astonishing corrosion down into the metal. I saved the scales -- they're ivory -- but the blade got put into my 'maybe some day' drawer. I've seen a lot of tarnish at this point, and I've seen some bad stuff. But that one takes the cake. All that black stuff on the blade went down almost half a millimeter. Some of it on the cutting edge. And then the spine was all wiggly.

Hopefully Dunc will post pictures of his rusty blade!

I'm still not sure if the one I posted the picture of had been put away with blood on it. I'm just not sure simple water could DO what had been done to that poor thing.

Originally Posted by lz6

No doubt some of the straight razor "finds", be it ebay, antique shops, etc. may have a bit of blood mixed in with the gunk between the scales. The first thing I do with the fixer uppers is run them under the hot water
faucet and using just dish soap and an old toothbrush clean them as much as possible being careful of the edge.
Dry them with a paper towel and use compressed air to dry between the scales especially at the pins. Then I begin to take a look and see what is next in the recovery.

I do the same

Maybe that razor belonged to Jack the ripper.

You might have some valuable mdse there.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Maybe that razor belonged to Jack the ripper.

You might have some valuable mdse there.

Wrong vintage but it might work on generating a bidding war on ebay.


Here is the pic


the thin brownish line inside the scale is the offending gunk, there was more but some of it dissolved and bloodied my hand.

Well, at least you know that at some point it was sharp.