Thread: Is this a good candidate for 1st restore?

Originally Posted by Bruno

I disagree. Patina is just aging. It doesn't add anything imo. This razor has no visible pitting damage, and should restore nicely.
With handsanding and polishing, you can get this blade to look mint again. And that is wonderful to look at.
Also, and I really mean this: if you want to learn to restore, this means you must learn to restore
In other words, don't do the minimum you can get away with, as some people suggest. Go the whole 9 yards. That is the way to learn stuff. Dive in and swim. Sure. You will make mistakes, and learn from them. That is how we all learn and make progress. If you don't make mistakes while learning, you're not trying hard enough.

So, my 2cts: take it apart and make it shine!

While I agree with a lot of what you say here Bruno, I also like old things that look old. To expand on that, I mean something that looks well seasoned and well cared for and is completely functional, as opposed to neglected and rusty and broken down. In my limited time here, it seems to me that finding something of this age, in this condition, is somewhat of a rarity and I don't want to waste this opportunity to take advantage of that. I'm thinking that there will be other, better, candidates for complete restore.

Thanks for the input,
Murf

From what little I have read, and what I am witnessing with the one resto I have done. The patina will come back over time, will it not? Might the only difference be in how "evenly" it comes back to the blade when in the hands of someone who will care for it?

Originally Posted by Orville

From what little I have read, and what I am witnessing with the one resto I have done. The patina will come back over time, will it not? Might the only difference be in how "evenly" it comes back to the blade when in the hands of someone who will care for it?

I'm sure it will come back, but from what I've been able to find, this razor is from somewhere between the late 1800s or early 1900s, so it would take more than 100 years to get the patina to this level.

To me, it's kind of like erasing history and only the events that occur from this point on are looked upon as real. Now, if you have a really ugly history, you may wish you could do that, which I see as being like fully restoring a neglected, rusty razor. But if your history is pleasant, you would want to preserve that.

Just my opinion.

I think it looks really good, you did a great job on the scales.

Originally Posted by murf

So, in the end, I decided to keep the patina on the blade and just clean it up, sanitize it, give it an oil bath for a few hours, and put as good an edge on it as I could with my limited experience. The edge came out very shaveable.

I did pretty much refinish the scales without taking it apart though. The weren't flat, meaning the razor wouldn't stand up on it's own like it is in most of these pictures because the back scale (non-stamped side of the blade) protruded further than the front scale making it tip over forward. I sanded the back scale even with the front and reshaped it to match the profile of the front scale, then sanded both with a progression of wet sanding starting at 1000 and ending at 3000, then polished them with Flitx. Oh, and tightened the pivot pin. I'm very happy with the results.


Much thanks to all for the advice and guidance!

Murf

That's a beautiful razor - guess I'm in the camp of, patina is another expression for dirt and gunk...I prefer my razors with a mirror finish, like right when they were new, which may have only been a satin finish at the time - but dirt and gunk free!

Originally Posted by murf

So, in the end, I decided to keep the patina on the blade and just clean it up, sanitize it, give it an oil bath for a few hours, and put as good an edge on it as I could with my limited experience. The edge came out very shaveable.

I did pretty much refinish the scales without taking it apart though. The weren't flat, meaning the razor wouldn't stand up on it's own like it is in most of these pictures because the back scale (non-stamped side of the blade) protruded further than the front scale making it tip over forward. I sanded the back scale even with the front and reshaped it to match the profile of the front scale, then sanded both with a progression of wet sanding starting at 1000 and ending at 3000, then polished them with Flitx. Oh, and tightened the pivot pin. I'm very happy with the result

Much thanks to all for the advice and guidance!

Murf

Congrats my friend, you did a fantastic job on it. Your next one will turn out better & the one after that even better. Job well done! Wait until you make some scales. Here is one of many. I just kinda finished these the other night & mocked up the razor. I still need to make a wedge for it & finish it but for now, I have some very small Allen head screws holding it together which I bought from Micro Fasteners:

http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...ml#post1503949

Originally Posted by Phrank

That's a beautiful razor - guess I'm in the camp of, patina is another expression for dirt and gunk...I prefer my razors with a mirror finish, like right when they were new, which may have only been a satin finish at the time - but dirt and gunk free!

I get that and I can certainly appreciate a well restored razor. I bought 2 razors that were beautifully restored by wolfpack34 (Mike). Mike does a level of work I can only hope to attain someday. I just bought a razor yesterday that is too valuable to me to attempt myself, and it's not in that well cared for patina state, so I'll be sending it to Mike to restore for me. I will, however, be acquiring more razors to work on myself.

Originally Posted by engine46

Congrats my friend, you did a fantastic job on it. Your next one will turn out better & the one after that even better. Job well done! Wait until you make some scales. Here is one of many. I just kinda finished these the other night & mocked up the razor. I still need to make a wedge for it & finish it but for now, I have some very small Allen head screws holding it together which I bought from Micro Fasteners:

http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...ml#post1503949

Thank you Sir. And those scales are beautiful! I think a brass wedge would look great in them.

Originally Posted by murf

Thank you Sir. And those scales are beautiful! I think a brass wedge would look great in them.

Thank you very much!

Here's one if yo haven't seen it yet. I made bleached white bone scales for it & they are very thin like Ivory but strong. You can't really see it but I made a brass scale for it as well.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...ml#post1422154

Originally Posted by Phrank

That's a beautiful razor - guess I'm in the camp of, patina is another expression for dirt and gunk...I prefer my razors with a mirror finish, like right when they were new, which may have only been a satin finish at the time - but dirt and gunk free!

I hope you can take this with good humour, but every time you refer to patina as dirt, I want to grab you in a headlock and make you take it back

I see the natural patinas shown here as no different than induced patinas such as bluing or using ferric chloride on Damascus steel. The only difference is the natural patina on steel is a matter of a great deal of time and luck. It will never be as even but I see it as every bit as beautiful.

There's nothing wrong with valuing gleaming metal above all else and I respect your taste, but a good natural patina is anything but dirt.