Sand and Polish or Leave Character Marks?

Well, my summer is racing by, and my time is increasingly dominated by getting ready for my new Fall assignment as department chair and AP Language and Literature teacher, so it's getting harder to find shop and play time with all the reading and prep I'm having to do. But I thought I might try to sneak in one more. So I got in a lot of fixer-uppers from Oz/Onimaru from our BST, and am most immediately intrigued by this nice Boker "Our Own" Hollow Ground:
Attachment 268272
Attachment 268273
Attachment 268274
It came in yellow plastic scales with the metal bolsters, though the pin was just about gone. I just popped it right out. I'm debating whether to keep it OG or rescale it in some nice cocobolo or nice brown streaked horn from the current blanks I have.

Anyway, as you can see from the pics, it's in pretty good shape save for some surface tarnish and that damn devil's split black tarnish, which (for me anyways) always seems to polish up all smooth in the initial assessment "let's see what we've got" session with steel wool and Mother's. But then you start sanding, and deep pitting always lies beneath. It's a quarter hollow blade, and has that nice etch, so I'm thinking about just polishing the bejesus out of it, foregoing sanding, and then just leaving the character marks intact.

So what do the experts think? TIA for your thoughts. Aaron/SHD

sorry your pics are not showing up

Wil try again- stupid Photobucket! (Okay, I had to download and do it that way-time to switch photo hosting site I think).

Can't see the pictures, but my go to is 0000 and WD40, then polish with flitz. Removes red rust, but usually leaves the blackening.

I do this for 2 reasons. 1) I like the character of and experience of using a blade that looks like it is 60 years or a century old. 2) I'm extremely lazy.

I'm not an expert by any means. But I believe anything other than cleaning up and polishing will erase the etching.

So there ya go

There are very few occasions where I feel like it really needs to have a thorough sanding. As for replacing the scales, if the old ones are in decent shape I would likely go with those. However that is from the guy that replaces most of his long term resident razors scales with something in bone. I really like the sounds of the streaked horn, maybe go with that. Wood scales are not really my thing. Horn or bone from my point of view, that is if you replace them at all.

I never am above leaving a bit of charachter.

Scrape off any raised rust with a SE razor blade and polish the heck out of it with 0000 steel wool and MAAS or something similar. Maybe sand with wet/dry starting at 1k. It takes a LOT of work to get out pits and you might mess up the etch if you go aggressive on it.

I would take it through 1k sandpaper to 2k leaving some character just removing major rust. Would maybe dip it in some rust removing mix (I use baking soda and lemon juice). Just to make sure any active rust is dead. Then a bit more with 2k grit and polish it up. Here is a made in pic Germany with some before and after pics. I was sort of lazy with restore and still need to finish setting bevel. https://imgur.com/a/pAn6w

My vote is too leave it as is. When the project is finished, if you're happy with it, all is good. If not, you still have the option to polish the blade.

I've had good luck with evapo-rust and then the steel wool/WD-40 treatment. If you decide that you want to go further, you can start with higher grit sandpaper and work down and then back up to make sure you don't loose the etching. It's more time that way, but let's face it, it's fun time!

Congrats on the new Fall Assignment. That has me reminiscing about the brief period in my life when I had a teaching gig at a local community college. Fall was always an exciting time--good memories.

I usually like to leave them as is, but if you're not going to use the original scales, the blade is already out of them, why not give it a going over. Some of the ones I see lately are really impressive. I'm not ambitious enough to do it myself, but if you are, go for it.

Once you remove the pins what time period are you going to restore it to?

That makes it not original, but that may have been the 4th set of scales on that blade......:shrug:

If it is serviceable in its present condition I tend to let it be. If it is useless yo have nothing to loose.

Just my opinion!

Thanks for all the insights, fellas-To be clear, if I do rescale it, I'm not doing a "restore" to any period at all, just making and fitting a set of scales that suit my design aesthetic and still developing skills.

I'm going to start by trying some 3M Marine Metal Restorer Mike aka Outback is graciously sending me. I may even try it on a buffer or use a fat round pencile eraser in a drill press as I've had good results with before-we'll see what that yields.

But I got to scratching around a bit on the black spots, and sure enough, there's deep pitting underneath. And I don't have a fat wedge's worth of steel under it to muck around with.

That is the slippery slope on hollow blades for sure. I killed one by hand sanding it too thin and it has impossible to hone. It is best to start with cleaning all the black off and then assessing how deep the pitting underneath is. I think you have this one well under control.

Well, thanks to Outback/Mike sending me some 3M Marine Metal Restorer, I got it cleaned up pretty well. I got most of the tarnish and discoloration off, and then buffed it quite a bit on a cotton wheel with fabuluster. I didn't expect to lose the black devil's spit, but I'm satistfied, and will probably pin it up today.
Attachment 268851
Attachment 268852
Thanks again Mike!

Now that turned out real nice!!

Looks a heck of a lot better, and no sanding.!!