Nice work all around gents. Nice looking scales and razors. Outback, it's great to see one of the boats you work on, yeah I can see that's a lot of work and I'm sure I don't even know the half of it!
I've been working on cleaning up a Wade & Butcher FBU I found in an antiques store in NH last summer. Someone had rescaled it at some point using hard pressed leather and copper rivets. The result was a lot of trapped moisture next to the blade, especially the tang. The tang stamp is half gone because of it. Here's a picture from the day I found it, I was able to talk them down off the price a little due to the condition. The tag said "would clean up great!" but I wasn't so sure at the time.
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I cleaned it up by hand only, no power tools. I was limited in how much I could do because I didn't want the grind to get too thin, I didn't want to lose the etch, and I didn't want to lose much width. The edge had some pitting so I did lose a little width but it still measures 17/16 or so. After working the blade clean, the blade face was finished with 800 grit wet/dry with a dab of Mother's then 2000 wet/dry with a dab of Mother's going spine to edge with a small leather backer. I have some horn, a hunk of lead, and some washers ready for the next steps.
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I set a "test bevel" and it looked good under magnification. I'm pleased that I will be able to save this one. These are always way, way out of my money range so I feel really fortunate to have found one in the wild for a good price, even if it has some condition issues. Next is making scales.