Thread: Celluloid polishing

I just did a set last night. Sand with grit 150 work through about 1500, change to those neet abrasive pads up to 1200, fianlly Maas. They always turn out spit polish black for me

I guess the only thing that bothers me about that is that these things are not terribly thick, doing that much sanding doesn't make them hair thin? That would be my only concern.

I have not wanted to touch these with actual paper because of the thickness problem, but the color really is annoying. And those abrasive pads are pretty aggressive, are you using a Dremel or all by hand?

Thanks!

K

call me I PMed you

I PM'd you back! I didn;t want to just call and say, hey is "BOGARTUS" there? I figured you must actually have a real name, and I might get hung up on my the missus if I called with that nom?

At any rate, I took your advice, and what I did was start with 1000 grit wet sandpaper, actually filled up a plastic tub with about 2 inches of warm water, sat my fanny down in front of the TV, dunked the handles in the water, loaded up the paper and went to town. It took a while and getting around the pins was a chore, but it worked well. I gauged how much to do by the slurry I was getting off the scales - the discoloration was only skin deep as it were, so as I was scrubbing, the water was a tan brown color. When I started getting no color, then I figured I had gotten all of the bad stuff - I then went to 2000, and made sure than I got everywhere. I then MAAS by hand, placing a dab between the finger and thumb and just running them between my fingers until it dried completely, then loaded up some more and just kept at it.

The result was a nice shine, but not complete. I then covered the scales with a very fine layer of Renaissance wax, hardly used much at all - rubbed it in quite a bit, waited for a nice haze, then wiped it off - you should see these scales now - you could see your self in them. Really brilliant. I was just too timid to take sand paper to these scales, but all in all it worked exceptionally well.

I plan on posting some pics soon as a general resto topic. Stay tuned.

K

My wife even calls be bogartus. At any rate I am glad they turned out. Lets see them sometime.

Name is
Joe

I have nothing but vintage razors in my collection, maybe my scales aren't that dirty and dull yet. When I buy a razor, unless it's from a trusted seller, I spray computer electronic cleaner into the scales. The stuff that you buy in electronic stores, has a nozzle with a brush at the tip. This is safe on most plastics and doesn't seem to harm the scales. It blows the dust and gunk out of the pins and corners. I rub a thin coat of machine oil and buff my scales to a good shine. I just barely started str8t shaving back in Feb. so my scales may not have seen as much use as some of the other member's but then I don't know the history of my razors either.
Ernest

I polish celluloid all the time and I have two methods that are safe and will make them look as good as new.

The first is get a can of cape cod polishing cloths, you can get them on Eboy. Just some light rubbing and they do a fantastic job. The other uses a dremmel with a muslin buff and some yellow rouge designed for very soft metals and plastic. You just apply the rouge to the muslin and using low speed, little pressure and keep moving rapidly at all times until it polishes then repeat with a chamois wheel. I got the rouge off the tool shop at timezone.com.

Personally I think the cape cod cloths are best unless the scales are really chewed up then the dremmel is better.

Thank you for the replies guys - I will check out the cloths, those sound interesting-

My scales are chewed up, they are just terribly discolored - from once being black they have turned a light pasty army green - and only on one side (the side that had been exclusively exposed to air and light - so one side is shiny black, the other is grotesque green.

I actually have been experimenting, and other than using exceptionally fine wet/dry sand paper under running water, I whipped out a chamois leather polishing wheel and went to town on a handle a while back, and it really did a decent job of shining the scales up, thereafter I hit them with Ren wax and they are popping now - just gorgeous.

When I get the first two back from Joe C, I will post picts of the lot.

K