Thread: Trash learning, or save/sell/pass off

Hey, I don't have a proper straight yet, but I did find this today at the local antique store for 5$. I figured that I would be able to either practice honing & other potentially damaging maintenance, save it to touch up later, or sell/pass off to one of the good folks here. However, I'm still quite new at this whole thing, so I'll ask you guys what is suggested that I do with it. Post or PM for more details, and better photos.

At first glance it looks like a good deal.
You should be able to get rid of the rust with sandpaper, and the blade looks good enough for honing practise.

I'd say: have fun.

Being new to straights and especially restoring them, there is a bunch of stuff on this blade you are going to have to deal with. Honing out that frown on the edge, the rust near the toe looks pretty bad, could have deep pitting underneath. Check out Bill Ellis' restoration cd if you want to get into it, otherwise, practice on this one. Good deal for $5 though.

Gets as much crud off of it with some kind of metal polish first before picking up any sandpaper. There are several polishes you could use MAAS, SemiChrome, and several others that are mentioned on this site. I have the Bill Ellis CD on restoration, and it is definatly money well spent.

This is good enough to actually restore. If I was restoring this blade I would pull the pivot pin then sand down the whole blade, starting from 220 through 2500, then polish and buff. I'd then clean up the scales, re-pin and start the honing process. You just might wind up with a winner.

Kenrup has just describe a good 40 hours of work. And it looks like it could be a nice razor but if it's your first and you just want to shave pick up a cheap shave ready razor off the b/s/t forum and save this one for your second.

- Bob

Note this is not what I have done, Just what I should have done.

Originally Posted by RobertFontaine

Kenrup has just describe a good 40 hours of work. And it looks like it could be a nice razor but if it's your first and you just want to shave pick up a cheap shave ready razor off the b/s/t forum and save this one for your second.

- Bob

Note this is not what I have done, Just what I should have done.

Gee, 40 hours really? I thought I worked faster then that. Maybe that's why my wife is dropping hints about getting to know each other again.

Ok, I’ve started working on this one. I didn’t have much in the way of sandpaper laying around, and the roads have been terrible today in New England (ice, snow, freezing rain, etc) so instead I took the thinnest dowel I have in my shop and cut off a few inches of it. Then I stuck it into the end of my dremel. Up in the kitchen, I made a thin paste out of water and a product known as Bar Keeper’s Friend.


http://www.barkeepersfriend.com/


It is basically a mild abrasive powder that I use to remove spots from my bar, and my glass topped stove without damaging the surface. I ran the tip of the dowel at an angle for a second across some coarse sandpaper to round it off, then applied the paste to the areas that needed work and used the dremel on medium and high speeds to grind away most of the rust. It also worked pretty well for removing the discolored patches, but I didn’t have the time to finish last night.


The dremel and dowel method seems to work pretty darned well for me so far, but will it work with the maas polish mentioned above? Anyone ever used this technique before? I went through about 15 inches total of that dowel last night with the bar keeper’s friend, and got all the major rust out, and most of the water spots. It also worked pretty well for making the tang quite shiny.

That's a great improvisation. I've only used Barkeepers in the kitchen. I wouldn't have thought of it for bad rust on a blade. I use a flap wheel on the Dremel when I have heavy stuff. I also tend to keep my speed on the Dremel more in the low and medium speeds. Sometimes thing happen a bit quick and it's hard to correct and "oh sh**t".

That is why I love this forum, We just learned a possibly great new trick from a guy doing his very first restore.... I would have never thought of using Bar Keeps on a razor, and what's really bad is that I ran Nightclubs for 25 years, and have never been without it under the sink. Great job, way to improvise and overcome
BTW we have a Restoration chat every Tues night at 8:00pm EST in the chat room, as we like to say bring your latest project pull up a chair and lets talk about it....