Thread: Chasing 1820's factory finish: Stenton Improved Silver Steel

This is the razor before I restored it.








In that last picture you can see that I started to file off the pivot pin before I stopped to take pictures of the unrestored blade.

See, I got this a few days ago and I wanted to shave with it. Normally, I just tape the spine, hone and shave. But this was a bit loose in the scales and when I started tamping down the pins the pile-side collar cracked. I took that as a sign to just do a full (albeit light) restore. But I wanted to go for the 1820's factory finish, a finish I don't often see done in restorations.

Specifically, the original treatment of the blade was to polish the whole piece to a glaze finish (for me, that equates to about 600 grit sandpaper) and then to only take the blade face to the crocus wheel (which is sort of your modern 'mirror finish', most commonly done with buffers). I occasionally see razors with enough of the original finish to know this looks great.

That in mind, I took everything apart and ran the scales and wedge through the ultrasonic jewelry cleaner. Five or six times. It had years of soap and grime on it (as you can see in some of the pictures) and I knew the jewelry cleaner would be a much easier way of getting that stuff off than just sanding. In the end, it got me about 80% of the way.

In the next post I'll show off the completed piece and talk about the stuff I wish I'd done better.

I really need to get a proper grinding wheel set up (I have one, but the stone it came with is in terrible shape -- ideally I'd make some wooden wheels I could put sandpaper strips on) because this razor really needs a super-light regrind to mitigate the hone wear. It wouldn't take much, and it'd look like a million bucks at the end of the process. Since I'm aiming to get that done soonish, I didn't go all the way down to 150 grit sandpaper and get the cleanest possible blade. It retains a fair bit of pitting.

I wanted to make the scales as clean as possible, but my technique for filling holes using horn dust didn't work well here because of color variation. The horn used on these scales is odd. I like them pretty good and I'm reasonably happy with how they turned out. Ideally I would have filled in the internal delamination better, but I really ought to bite the bullet and start experimenting with heat-treating horn and do this kind of work really properly.

Getting the different finish on blade versus tang and spine was pretty easy. I used a bit of tape masking to really make it pop at the end. The polish was done with hand-sanding, micromesh and a couple Dremel polishing attachments using either the red polishing compound or a bit of Maas, depending on what I was trying to do. Mostly I used the Dremel to polish out stubborn scratches.

Kids, use fresh sandpaper any time you start polishing a new blade. There's no reason not to. Me and my "eh, I'll just use the stuff out on my workbench" technique should be a guiding light. I end up doing double the work to make up for the inconsistent scratch patterns and sore fingers from bearing down on sandpaper whose grit is almost gone. Use fresh sandpaper!

All that and it still isn't honed.

Wow, beautiful work so far. I love those 1820s blades.

Wow!!

The old girl came out great!! Some time a little imperfection or minor wear adds that touch of personality. I have bought a few blades in the past just on what i saw in reagrds to the personality or age of the the straight!

Great work! I hope you post more!

Zak, personally i think you did a great job, the scales look nice and clean and sealed, and im so glad the blade doesnt look like a complete mirror, thanks for sharing!

Nice save, Zak. Old razors should look old, IMO. As long as it shaves and does not have active rust, it will serve well!

The old girl looks good! Get her honed up and tell us more about her!

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Nice save, Zak. Old razors should look old, IMO. As long as it shaves and does not have active rust, it will serve well!

We'll see how it shaves.

I still haven't honed it. It's got a couple of nicks in the edge and after grinding and grinding and grinding that Parker 'Improved Eagle Razor' on a 1k DMT, I'm gun-shy about creating a bevel on a 1k plate.

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

We'll see how it shaves.

I still haven't honed it. It's got a couple of nicks in the edge and after grinding and grinding and grinding that Parker 'Improved Eagle Razor' on a 1k DMT, I'm gun-shy about creating a bevel on a 1k plate.

Haha I can't tell you how many times I've said that. And yet I still punish myself with the chipped up near-wedges.

Those scales look really great to me. Kinda makes me think maybe I should have tried to save some of the ones I tossed on reciept.

The whole thing is top notch IMO. Thanks for posting.