Thread: one of the nicest to come through my hands

A while ago 19george asked me if I could put some custom scales on a blade for him, little did I know what he was going to send me. Turns out he managed to snag a 7/8 W&B in fantastic condition; my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw it. Anyway, I brought her up to a sparkling near mirror polish and, as per Georges request, fitted her in some chechen scales. The result is what I think I can say is the nicest blade to come through my hands.

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Once again, the chechen practically glows with a shiny brown irridescence when you move it around in the light, which, unfortunently, the photos don't convey. You can catch a glimpse of this property in the photos, but it's really much more fantastic when you can hold it. Love this razor, now I just need to find out where to get one of my own

nice razor, when you find another you have to play nice and share.
Phil

It does indeed look great. I'm looking forward to laying my hands on it.

Very nice. What is your process to bring up such a fine mirror polish?
And what brand of working materials.

Originally Posted by Damon

Very nice. What is your process to bring up such a fine mirror polish?
And what brand of working materials.

-what he said.

-whatever

-Lou

Drooling... nothing more to say

Originally Posted by Damon

Very nice. What is your process to bring up such a fine mirror polish?
And what brand of working materials.

I could write tons on the process, but I'll try to keep it simple here.

Start with as low a grit as sandpaper as you need to remove imperfections; 600 for this one, but I'll usually start at 400 or 220. Sand perpendicular to the edge of the blade, but, for each progressive grit, change angels slightly so that you can tell if all the striations from the previous grit are being removed. It's quite important to try and remove the striations from previous grits, especially the low grits, or they'll endup staying and showing in the final finish. Work your way through all the grits up to 2000 or 2500; a thorough procession would be something like 400-600-800-1000-1500-2000, at the very least the next grit should not be more than 2x higher than the previous. Once you get to 2000 or 2500 grit, it should look near mirror. After that I use some simichrome polish (MAAS, Flitz, etc. work as well) with a felt polishing bit for my dremel and polish the heck out of the blade. The result is a very near mirror polish, but, there are usually some striations from lower grits that make it through.

The sandpaper I use is the 3M brand stuff that I get from the automotive section of some local store. So far I find the 3M paper really works great. I use simichrome polish, which you can find on ebay, but I've also used MAAS for an almost identical result. I've never tried Flitz, but I hear it works just as well. For sanding I use my home made drum sanding rolls to get quite abit of work done, you can still do it by hand if you have the patience

GREAT! Now I've got to clean saliva off my keyboard. Make me drool, you ... I'm not checking any more of your resto posts Jason. I've had it!

X

jk

Originally Posted by xman

GREAT! Now I've got to clean saliva off my keyboard. Make me drool, you ... I'm not checking any more of your resto posts Jason. I've had it!

X

jk

*hands X a sponge*

Dont worry I rinsed it after mopping up the drool here...

Originally Posted by ToxIk

I could write tons on the process, but I'll try to keep it simple here.

Start with as low a grit as sandpaper as you need to remove imperfections; 600 for this one, but I'll usually start at 400 or 220. Sand perpendicular to the edge of the blade, but, for each progressive grit, change angels slightly so that you can tell if all the striations from the previous grit are being removed. It's quite important to try and remove the striations from previous grits, especially the low grits, or they'll endup staying and showing in the final finish. Work your way through all the grits up to 2000 or 2500; a thorough procession would be something like 400-600-800-1000-1500-2000, at the very least the next grit should not be more than 2x higher than the previous. Once you get to 2000 or 2500 grit, it should look near mirror. After that I use some simichrome polish (MAAS, Flitz, etc. work as well) with a felt polishing bit for my dremel and polish the heck out of the blade. The result is a very near mirror polish, but, there are usually some striations from lower grits that make it through.

The sandpaper I use is the 3M brand stuff that I get from the automotive section of some local store. So far I find the 3M paper really works great. I use simichrome polish, which you can find on ebay, but I've also used MAAS for an almost identical result. I've never tried Flitz, but I hear it works just as well. For sanding I use my home made drum sanding rolls to get quite abit of work done, you can still do it by hand if you have the patience

Jason simply beautiful, and something we all can aspire to

Why is it important to sand perpendicular to the edge, as opposed to just sanding lengthwise down the blade? Is this where your sanding drums come into use with the dremel and you sand perpendicular to the edge while working along the length of the blade? I would have thought if you were just sanding by hand that sanding perpendicular would be a very difficult thing to do as opposed to sanding lengthwise.

Another question while I'm at it is in one of Vlad's restoration posts he mentioned about using Sterol instead of water for the wet and dry sanding process. He said it helped the cutting of the wet and dry better etc. But in other posts since I have seen mineral oil being used, is there any difference one way or another with Sterol or mineral oil?

Cheers
John