Thread: First Major Restoration

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself right now. I've been out of shaving the last three years because I grew a full beard but recently picked it back up. So I was out vintage blade hunting and found an old Boker which had a pretty decent sized chip in the cutting edge. I bought it ($20) knowing it would take some major work, a lot of work I've never done before. I've restored before but only from blades with no chips and just needed some TLC. This was something more.

Anyways, I got the chip out with some 360 grain paper then moved to the 4,000 (that's all I have is the 4,000/8,000, don't really have a lot of money to spend on wet stones). It took some work and I got frustrated about half way because I couldn't see any progress. Also, it seems to hone uneven. The bottom doesn't hone as nice as the top. I just stropped it with a .5 diamond spray and it performs the hanging hair test on the top half of the blade. I'm actually very proud of that! But I need to take it back to the 8,000 to work on the bottom to see if I can get the bottom half of the blade to split a hanging hair.

Any feedback, advice, or comments? Overall, I'm pretty proud of my progress so far. I plan on putting some beautiful ram horn scales on it when I'm done.

A picture would be nice.
Jiffy marker is a good one to test your stroke to ensure you are getting a full edge stroke on every pass.

I did that to start with and that's one of the reason's why I figured it was honing like that even before I stropped it. Though that's a good idea, I'll make sure to keep putting marker on the edges to see how it's coming.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it before I started but I'll get a picture up here soon on what it looks like now.

Usually the bevel is set with a 1k stone but in your case make sure that you can shave arm/leg hairs at the 4k level before moving on to the 8k. %90 of the work is done at the bevel set. There are quite a few members in MI so maybe you can meet with one of them if the work becomes too frustrating. One on one help can't be beat.

That reminds me! I need to change my address on here...we just moved to Indiana in the last couple of months.

Originally Posted by frankthetank86

That reminds me! I need to change my address on here...we just moved to Indiana in the last couple of months.

got members in Indiana too! And depending on where you're at you're not too far from Ohio either!

A 4k/8k is better than a 12k (what I started with lol). What corner of the state are ya located? We've got an active member in every corner, if nothing else, so not too far in a given direction .

If the bottom (the heel) isn't getting honed, you may have the stabilizer on the stone. You might need to take in the stabilizer some. But we need to see a picture before we can tell!