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Conservatively Resotored Englishmen
You may want to hide your eyes. My idea of restoration on these two razors is a far cry from the beautiful, artistic renovation typical in this forum. My hats off to you all! (also, my apologies for the photo quality...about on par with a bad eBay seller). BTW, yes, the pictures are the after pics...for some of you these probably look like your befores! :D
Up from the grave are a couple of stout old Englishmen; a Wade & Butcher and a Jonathan Crookes, both Sheffield, both pre-1890 from what I'm told here in the SRP since they don't have the country of origin on them. Wish I had better pics to show you the blade form details. I paid a grand total of $11 for both from a local junk shop. Both were rusty, dirty and I wasn't sure but what I'd paid too much! But, the end of the story is that they both are shaving great now and they've hooked me on the old, stout blades!
In a nutshell, here's the conservative restoration steps I did:
Blades:
- Hand sanded off the rust, 400 grit in stages down to 1500. On some stages I used liberal mineral spirits on the sandpaper to help prevent clogging and loosen things more easily.
- Carefully filed a couple of spots on the Crookes tang near the pin where the rust was especially pitted.
- MAAS on the blade and pins. Used Q-tips and rags to get at the recesses around the tang/pins
Scales:
- Scrubbed with dish soap, tooth brush. Inside scales, used pipe cleaners and q-tips. Also used a scraper (tool steel with a burred edge) to scrape the insides of the scales.
- W&B horn – This had a bad chip and a few holes on the edge (some ancient insect in the last 130 years or so). I mixed some pigments with a dab of marine epoxy to more or less match the color of the scales. Filled those voids to excess and let dry. Trimmed carefully with a razor blade (something useful for a mass produced blade, eh?). Then, with the point of the razor blade I made scores in the epoxy to help blend it with the grain in the horn. Came out looking pretty good, hard to find the repairs. I re-energized the horn by rubbing in a liberal dose of peanut oil (borrowed the idea from treenware). Worked well, giving the horn new life.
- Crookes wood – Not sure of the wood, maybe beech? Looks like some of the wood on my old tools. It was pretty dry, lifeless and spotted. I scrubbed it with mineral spirits and fiddled with various mild cleaners to get some of the spots off. Most of my fiddling was pointless I think. In the end, I took fine sandpaper (400?) with mineral spirits and just cleaned it up. Then with a dilute walnut colored wash/stain/dye, I stained the wood. Finished with a few rubbed in light applications of boiled linseed oil. (drying periods between all these wet steps)
- Final touch – Waxed ‘em both with a nice dark antique furniture wax and buffed.
Sharpening:
- Ah, the real challenge! Short story on this is that I learned a lot with a few wrong turns. In the end, the useful things I did was some careful time on a 1K ceramic stone to get past the rotten metal that time had left on the edges. Some relatively simple work on the barber hones and strops after that. As much as I am trying to learn to do things the old way, I don’t yet trust my thumb nail, thumb pad testing abilities exclusively. So I used the microscope to coach my thumbs.
Shaving:
- Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Shaving with these hefty guys is a different experience than my mid 20th century full hollows. I like this difference and the smiled profile is nice IMO. It’s taking some adjustment but I’m liking it!
Thanks for reading along. As I said, a conservative restoration. Not for everyone, but in case there are other kindred spirits, I thought I’d post.
- Dale
