Thread: Restoring wade and butcher razor

After some sanding I noticed all these pits near the toe edge. How bad are they in your opinion?

Fairly bad.
If the metal is bad from corrosion you may not be able to get a good edge. Here the corrosion is deep in the metal and it will probably chip as you hone.

If the corrosion is just on the surface you may be able to get an edge that will hold up to normal use.

That said, you will not keep the width of the blade. I would try bread knifing first. See gssixguns vids on how to to do this.

Getting to good metal on this blade will take some effort and a lot of luck.

I just gave up on a blade like this. Once I got the corrosion out I only had metal film to hone. The blade went to the wind chime box.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

Looks like your voing to loose some steel getting the toe edge clean. High angle honing until the pits are gone. Then use a loupe while trying to set bevel. You will find the edge keeps crumbling until you get clean steel.

By then you may be too far into the blade for the geomitry to be right or past the point of return. But if you just want to practise.

Depends in what the other side looks like. If it looks the same...its probably toast.

It's sometimes hard to tell in pictures. Sometimes it's even hard to tell by looking at it with the naked eye. The proof is in the pudding, the pudding being honing in this case. Once you put it to the stones it may go away quickly but sometimes an edge looks perfectly fine until you start honing and find you've opened up Pandora's box. What looks like a small pit at the surface can sometimes turn into a minefield on the hones.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I’ll try honing this weekend and post updates. I really picked this up more to learn how to hone. But I was also hoping I can get it back to life.

Tried the bread knifing advice and managed to get a clean edge. Will learn how to hone the blade next!

On future projects, high angle honing is as effective as bread knifing and easier to get your bevel back afterwards and in many cases saves a little steel.
I’m glad you got clean steel.

Ditto. That was a nice razor in its day and should still shave well if resurected. I have a couple that are similar. Had been in pretty rough shape and came back to shave well even with a good deal of cosmetic short comings.