Thread: New Guy

Good evening all,

I'm new to everything straight razor but I decided to jump in. It's an interesting hobby, from restoring and sharpening to pre shave and shaving, and I'm very into it. I recently began restoration attempts on a few razors I picked up in a lot. I've had medium success at a few methods but I'm looking for input. I've read a few of the posts on here and didn't quite find what I was looking for. Perhaps I didn't look closely enough but here goes:

I am currently hand sanding blades to remove minor pitting, water marks, and rust. I am starting with an 80 grit and following the usual progression until about 500 then I jump since after buffing and using polish the scratches are not visible and I have obtained a mirror to my liking. My question is this: Have any of you attempted restoring a blade from a 1"x30" belt sander? If so, how has this worked for you? I have tried applying some greaseless I obtained from Eastwood and I could not get any of them to stick to my wheels. I tried a few different types of wheels with zero success. The best I got was a concentrated load on one area of the wheel. Mind you, my bench buffer is 6" at 3450 RPM and it's not variable. Could it be the compounds? Or is it my particular buffer? I didn't want to spend the money without an opinion so I continued on by hand sanding. In regards to the 1"x30" belt sander, I would be using a 80 grit and up progression and probably start hand sanding by 400. Mainly, I'm trying to reduce the amount of time I spend on 80/120 getting the pits and discolorations out. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure I'll have numerous questions over the course of this trade.

I look forward to interacting with you all and hearing the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding your straight razor restoration projects. Thanks to all for the info that you have already posted, it has been a great help thus far.

-Booze

I would say a belt sander is crossing the line from restore to regrind. It's going to take a lot of metal off fast. If the "How to" in the library isn't helping I would do some searching on you tube. It has been awhile since I looked up anything but when I do it works. The search box up in the right hand corner is like a genie in a bottle too. I can't figure out, from what your saying, why you can't get compound on a wheel.

Oh and welcome to SRP . I am sure somebody will come along and start trying to help you figure this out.

I tried out a belt sander and you are correct. It takes off a lot of metal. Too much. I did some searches and in the meantime I have been hand sanding. I don't mind the sanding but efficiency is something that I practice at work and in life, so I would be doing myself a disservice if there was something faster out there. I still don't understand my issue with the greaseless and searching the internet hasn't solved the problem. I did find someone out there with a similar issue, but there was nothing posted that alluded to a solution. Just a few techniques to possibly help. I tried them and that didn't help either. I have options, one would be to try greaseless compounds from a different company. I perused the library and read that someone used flap wheels. I would be interested in trying this if I knew what I was supposed to be buying. I don't know if I can attach them to my buffer or if I need a new tool altogether. My biggest problem is removing the pitting. It just seems like the hand sanding is doing nothing, even at 80 grit. In my opinion, they are not that deep of pits so it's frustrating to see no progress after 45 minutes on one side.

Back to the sandpaper for now. I'll try to find some more information on flap wheels but if anybody has information on this please let me know. Thanks for the help.

Flap wheels are used on a dremmel and they come in many grits. Once again they take off a lot of metal real quick. They will also spit razor parts at your face if your not VERY careful. A Dremmel will speed things up some but you will still have to take those scratches out. Sometimes pits are easier to live with than take out. If you have to get the blade too thin then it's not worth it. Any depressions you make with the dremmel will show up after the polish. It will look like a distortion. Think fun house mirror.
You want efficiency go with a buffer and greaseless compounds. Once again be careful and don't let the razor get to hot no matter what you use. Blow the temper and you might as well keep a trash can handy. I do about 50 razors a year so far and I have dropped back to hand sanding for the simple reason I can do a much nicer job and I have the time. It's a matter of finding out for yourself what you need to get the job done but this whole restore thing is for my enjoyment not to make money. I understand striving to be efficient as I am the same. Part of that is getting the end results you want and sometimes the slower way works best.

Thanks for the information. I'm trying one last thing before I decide to just hand sand. I'm trying a different bench grinder that I converted to a buffer, since it has a lower RPM setting (2000 as opposed to 3450) and a different brand of greaseless (Caswell's Formax Satin Glow over Eastwood's brand) and I'll see how that goes. I'm not restoring razors for profit either. I like the process of it and seeing my completed work. It's fun for me. The only turn-off for me is that one aspect of the process takes 10 hours. It takes me less time to fabricate scales, make a wedge, progress from 400-2000, buff, polish, set and pin- combined. So if I can use greaseless to cut that time from 10 hours to 1 hour I'm going to try!

I like the Caswell selection and use their greaseless on a 6" wheel buffer/grinder and it works well if I take my time. Glu-tite helps to keep the compound on the wheel. Spiral sewn cotton is what I put the greaseless on these days. But - no matter what, know that you're going to get a mess everywhere if you don't rig up a cardboard box or something similar to shield the room (and yourself) as you put on the glu-tite and compound.

Even going slowly the wheel will grind through the blade quickly so go slow and start at the higher grit you can use and still remove what you want gone. You can always backtrack to lower grits.

If I need to I'll start at 80 grit and then work upward. Ideally I can start at 320 or so and work up to 600 grit on the wheels and then it's hand sanding to 2K or 4K and then polish.

Thanks a lot for the info. I use the same size wheels and the same kind. I didn't think about the glu-tite but I did see it on the website. For some odd reason I never considered starting out at a higher grit to see what I could do. I always start out at 80 and just work my progression. Good tip. I may be doing a lot of unnecessary work.

Right now I have a little particle board box I fashioned over the buffer for applying compound. I still have the streak across the roof of the garage from the first time. Lesson learned.

Quick question, what speed is your buffer/grinder and what have you learned about using the different speeds throughout the process?

I have 2 grinder/buffers - one is very old and seems to run at around 1600 rpm (maybe) - the other is variable speed and I'm still working out what rpm is best to apply compound, though I'm leaning towards the slowest possible speed that will melt the compound. Thus far slower seems better. The variable speed is a Porter Cable and runs from 2000 to 3400 rpms.