Sheffield surprise

I got two cheap-o razors off Ebay this week just to practice cleaning and honing on mostly. I like the idea of making a razor pretty and functional again and I need practice honing.

So..

This guy was listed as a Genco, and to be fair, it was in a Genco box. The pic on Ebay gave next to no information and was a far away shot to boot, no close up at all. On opening it though, I saw immediately that it was an old Wade & Butcher. There was enough rust on it that I couldn't see at all if it said Sheffield, or Sheffield, England on the tang. I had to polish a sea of rust off just to check.

I only used my handpiece and diamond paste to remove rust and polish this one up, so there is still some pitting, but not too bad.

It does have extreme hone wear and a crack in the scales however. At any rate, it was a surprise for sure.

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-25-35_946.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-25-25_779.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-24-24_645.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-27-24_498.jpg

At any rate, it polished up fine, and I've been hitting the scales with neatsfoot oil repeatedly, they're looking ok too. Not sure if I should glue the crack or have it rescaled. I kinda think the hone wear makes it not really worthwhile to rescale, but I'm not really sure.

Here it is after a couple hours polishing with a boar bristle brush in a dental handpiece with diamond porcelain polish.

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-51-42_653.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-50-35_339.jpg

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-52-50_966.jpg

Gonna shave with it tonight and see how it does. I'd love any recommendations about the crack and wether it's worth rescaling or if the hone wear makes it not worth it.

Nice surprise!

Who cares about hone wear if it's for your own use? :) If it works well for you, don't worry about it. And if it shaves well and the crack is bugging you then definitely rescale it. For now I'd say try it out, see how it works for you, and pat yourself on the back for a nice bit of luck!

It was almost embarrassingly cheap, I got a nice chuckle when I opened it.

Strangely, the other razor I got this week, also had a crap pic and also under 5 bucks, was sold as a Wester Bros manganese blade, was in a Wester Bros box, is also a pre 1891 Sheffield, though in much better shape. I just haven't taken pics of it yet.

I hope you're buying lottery tickets this week!

Nice work maddafinga

Can you go into further detail on your polishing technique. you refer to using your "(dental) handpiece and diamond paste to remove rust and polish this one up"?

What is a dental hand piece?

thanks

Cheetah meat

its the thing the dentist stuffs in your mouth to make smoke come out of it

You're close, but not exactly right Magpie. Cheeta, I'll grab some pics tomorrow at work and post them. It's like a super dremel controlled by a foot pedal. I use it to grind porcelain crowns after firing.

Pics tomorrow.

Ok, so here is my handpiece. It's run by a foot pedal with a really long throw, so it's very very controllable. It runs from 0 up to very very high rpms, I don't know how high exactly, I'd guess in the 50k range though.

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-16-47_884.jpg

The sending unit...

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-16-38_177.jpg

This is the type of boar bristle polishing brush I used.
http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...-17-08_848.jpg

And the polishing paste...

http://i950.photobucket.com/albums/a...1-17-05_52.jpg

Thanks for posting that info