Thread: Help with an 8/8 Butcher restore

hello all, i recently picked this guy up for a decent price and have started to clean it up. It has some issues with rust/pitting, but it is not the worst ive ever seen. So my question is how much of it do i remove before i call it quits? I have only very lightly sanded the really bad spots and lightly hand polished the whole blade to get an idea of where its at and how to proceed. Im leaning towards just lightly sanding the whole thing, then putting it in the tumbler for a few days in walnut then a few more in red corn cob. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

How far to go is always a hotly debated subject here. I think it is a delicate balance between erasing the rust, both red and black, without erasing too much of the pitting and marks that make it look it's age. Everyone has their own level of taste there. Some want only mirror blades in their collection. One of the things to be careful of, and almost everyone agrees, is to make sure you don't round out or blow any of the lines, which is tough with an extreme case. If you look through the workshop forum there is a sticky at the top of how do I where do I. It is an important read. I hand sand a lot and use wine corks as my sandpaper backer, it helps to keep things flat. Wet sanding with WD-40 in the higher grits help keep the scratches shallow.

I've always been a minimalist and rarely went to sand paper on a restore. I love seeing it's life on the blade, but rust has to go... My weapons of destruction are still a dremil and a wire wheel. When it's bad enough or hard enough to withstand the wheel than I would resort to a touch of sandpaper on a small rounded dowel to only hit the hard rust. Than back to the wheel, polish with Maas and hone her up

I also like the signs of age. I do not see the appeal of putting a mirror finish on a 100+ year old razor. Just my opinion. I thank you both for your input, and I will be hitting the bad spots with the dremel wire wheel to see if I can stop the rust that's there. There are only a few spots where it still looks active so hopefully it won't be too difficult to get it. There are some black spots that have varying interesting features, they almost look like tree roots. Is this a bad sign?

All the black is also rust. If you just want to remove the black and not the steel use steel wool and polish. Start with 00 or 000 then up to 0000.

I also favor the minimalist approach. But I think that a soft, satin finish is OK in some instances. No offense to those who appreciate a bright and shiny finish, but it's just not for me.

RezDog is absolutely right: rounded out or blown lines is the worst... razor abuse IMHO.

It's so far away from the FBU 8/8 that we usually see It's really not worth asking what do we think If it were mine I would ask myself what am I really aiming for with this restore? My honest opinion the most I would want from this razor would be a razor that shaves really well anything else would be a bonus.

Well the advise on being able to put more than one razor in a tumbler is not so true. This razor now has two decent sized chips in the blade edge.

Originally Posted by prodigy

Well the advise on being able to put more than one razor in a tumbler is not so true. This razor now has two decent sized chips in the blade edge.

I have NEVER had any troubles with the VIBRATING tumbler.

Hope you used this and not a spinning one.

It's the second razor I've damaged following advice from here, I must be having a spell of bad luck.