Thread: Two Recent Ebay Acquisitions

Nice Packwood! I bid on that and it just got a little high for my taste. Glad it landed in the hands of someone on this forum. Look forward to seeing how you bring it back.

Couldn't find the one I did this with but see how this etch is kind of "framed" by the un-etched metal around it?

Try to keep the bluing.within the rectangle like coloring in the lines. This keeps the work removing it to a minimum. Packing paper around the dowel or blank newsprint works well. For finer, tighter detail use copy paper. Don't be afraid to try it more than once. You can't really do damage.

Thanks Paul. So my understanding then is to use a q-tip and apply the bluing to the letters with minimum over-splash (sorry, trying for the right word) onto the rest of the blade.
Then take a dowel with paper wrapped tightly around it and rub the letters in order to remove the bluing then carefully remove the bluing from any area of the blade it splashed or seeped onto?
Sorry, my logic synaptic nodes are mis-firing.

IMHO based on the condition of the show face if you apply cold blue to the surface you are going to create a hack of a mess. The blade face is full of scratches and pits which the blue will bring out. Being below the surface face of the blade it will be difficult to remove the bluing there. Actually I have never seen cold blue used on a photo etch of this type. I have only seen it used to highlight lettering etched into the blade. If you decide to give it a go please post some pictures.

When I get home I'll find the one I did this with. Trying to remove a spot I sanded ever so lightly and removed all of the darkened part of the etch. I then used cold bluing to re-darken it and paper on a dowel to remove it from the high spots which would be the blade around the etch and the lettering and scrolling. Give me an hour or two and I'll post some pics with some arrows and all of that jazz

Thanks Paul. I look forward to the information. At this stage I'm thinking it is beyond my present skill level to attempt. If I could watch someone do it, or be at someone's shop and see it first hand, I would feel more comfortable.
So, first major fail on the Packwood: The scales crumbled like crackers attempting to remove the pins even though I thought I was being super careful.
Adapt, improvise, overcome!

Ahhh! That stinks! These are the chances we take. Karl may be right that there may be too many scratches for that to turn out right. A couple of things I have to give caveats for: first of all this is not for the faint of heart. Also I have to somewhat retract what I said that you can't hurt the blade with the bluing. Gun blue is an acid, I think it's nitric acid or hydrochloric if I remember correctly. This must be done very carefully because if you apply too much it will etch the blade in the same way the acid that was used originally etched it. I'll also disclaim that people think I'm crazy doing this. This is the one that I did before.

As I think I said before trying to clean up a spot I basically ruined the etching. There was no dark relief area left at all. The job I did on this is not perfect but, as I said people think I'm crazy and some people on the forum who I respect very much urged me to quit before I ruined it. As far as I was concerned it had already been ruined but I did stop when they urged me to. I'm not completely satisfied with this but it's not too bad. That's why I haven't gone further with it. I don't know if you're familiar with how acid etching works but what they will do is shield the areas that they don't want etched with what's called a resist which is either tape or even ink. You can actually use a sharpie, nail polish or an iron-on transfer. If you see what I'm pointing to with the pencil in the picture above you can see that there's a hard break between the etched part and the non-etched part. You want to keep the bluing inside the brake in the darkened part.
Just for giggles I pulled out this old razor which has an etching which is ruined just by age and misuse. It It was in this condition when I got it.


Again notice how I'm pointing to where the blade has been masked to resist the etch. So I taped of the outer area as a "resist." This is blue electrical tape.

This is a makeup applicator I'm applying it with

In this pic you can see what I meant how I applied up to the bevel in the way you could instead of masking.


Since I'm at my photo limit I'll do another post to finish.

... so I actually went a little heavy with this and didn't wash it off quite soon enough so the bluing was built up kind of high. For that reason I used some worn out 3000 grit paper just to bring it down some quickly. I'm not really concerned with saving this one and as you'll be able to see in the later pictures this one is pretty well beyond saving which yours may be also. My intention with this one ultimately is to sand it back down to smooth and then reapply a resist from a picture and re-etch the entire face.



These pictures are by the way not exactly in order but I think you can get the idea of what I'm talking about from this though. If you have a fine enough applicator you could blue around the lettering or polish out the lettering some and then use a sharpie as a resist on them and then once you've done the bluing clean it off with alcohol. The bluing by its very nature is not that simple to do very smoothly and cleanly. If you've ever tried to reblue a gun You know that the guys that do it at the factory are very skilled to get it looking smooth the way they do.
As I said before this takes bravery and there's no guarantee that you won't make a mess but it can work if you do it right and if you have enough left to work with. Also remember that I used the sandpaper here as a drastic measure. In the first one I did I used plain paper and reapplied the bluing and very light coats several times.

Wow! Thanks Paul. Now I understand what the process is and what is going on. I found this thread by Geezer as well and read through it too.

https://sharprazorpalace.com/worksho...-etchings.html

As far as this Packwood goes; I paid WAY too much for it to begin with. My RAD was way off the map. When I was done I blinked, and realized I was sweating hard and I had no idea how my credit card got into my hand. I will try this on a few of my other stashed razors that have etching that needs to be brought out.

Yeah, I just saw his post also. His method is a little different. I like the lapping film idea.