10 Attachment(s)
Who knew? My grandfather used a Henkels!
Edit: Whoops. That title should read "Henckels"...
I just returned from visiting my parents in Florida and was telling them about getting into straight razor shaving. By "getting into," see my first shave post/intro. I told them I probably wouldn't shave again until I got a strop and proper cream. My mom responds, "Well, I know where your grandfather's strop is. I'll find it when we get home." They moved down to FL to live with my grandmother and it's the same house my dad grew up in ~60 years ago!
Well, she found that strop alright. Actually, two of them:
Attachment 98780
I ran into my attachment limit for this post; here's two more pics:
- Close up front
- The backs, showing cloth on one and some sort of rough leather dotted strop on the other
These haven't been used in quite some time. I'd be interested in recommendations on how to refurbish them for use. The darker one, for example, has a reasonably sized gouge in the edge. There's also some cracking here and there. I was thinking mink oil to start just softening the leather and perhaps sanding away some of the bigger defects. Here's a shot that lets the lighting show the worn off shiny sections of the strop as well as the gouge.
Attachment 98773
Here's an image showing the cracking in the rough leather side of one of the strops.
Guess what else? In addition to the strops, my mom found straight razors, too!
Attachment 98768
The first is a Henkels in incredible shape. My grandfather died in 1988. Who knows when he last used this, but it looks like it could have been quite recently. One side shows the Henkels logo and reads "Platinum, Carbon Steel Blade, Reg US Pat Off" and the other, "J.A.Henkels Twin Works, Solingen-Germany, 401."
Attachment 98769 Attachment 98770
The other blade isn't in quite the shape of the first, but amazingly the rust has kept almost entirely to the spine. One side reads, "Adoration Blue Steel" and a number. Perhaps 166? The other side was a bit obscured by rust, but some ebay posts helped complete the name: "Giesen & Forsthoff, Solingen-Germany." The scales read "Adoration Hand Forged."
Attachment 98772 Attachment 98774 Attachment 98775
I was planning on trying electrolysis on this blade. I could use abrasives, but think electrolysis will be more targeting of the rust and gentler overall. I can use finer abrasives later once the rust is gone and I can see what pitting there might be. The tang is actually blued and I'd be bummed to lose that, but I can't see that grinding on it would be any more gentle than electrolysis. Thoughts on this?
For my last goodie... I recalled finding a double edged safety razor down there as a kid. I used to visit my grandma most summers and knew I pretend shaved with a DE one year when I was something like eight or ten. Well, we were able to dig that up too! Not in mint condition, but quite nice nonetheless. Most things just appear to be discolored; the plating doesn't appear to be worn through anywhere that I saw. I scrubbed at it with some toothpaste and and old toothbrush.
Attachment 98776 Attachment 98777
From my searching, this is either a silver Aristocrat (looks really similar to the gold one on this site -- scroll down to the "Return of the Aristocrat" section) or a Super Speed, or a "Slim" adjustable TTO. The H3 stamp on the bottom dates it to 1962. As it turns out, this wasn't my grandfather's like I thought... my dad recounted that this one was for my grandmother's legs every Saturday evening! My face didn't know the difference.
So, quite the vacation trip with lots of neat finds and neat artifacts of history. I used the DE this morning on ~6 days of growth and it worked wonderfully with blades that were who knows how old (the Gillettes shown in the pic).
Thanks for following along.