Getting the hang of blade restoration, any words of wisdom

[cannonfodder]

After seven blades I believe I am finally getting the hang of blade restoration. I have been trying different techniques to sand and polish tarnished to outright rusted blades. I will tell you, this is harder than it looks. At the surface, as a newbie I think to myself “how hard can it be, I have sanded my share of car bodies for paint”. Boy was I wrong. This is tedious and time consuming work and I have a very healthy respect for those of you that have mastered this.

I have started using a 1/8 inch dowel rod cut one inch long as my sanding block. Originally I was simply wrapping the sandpaper around my finger and sanded away, usually with mixed and uneven results. With the dowel I can wrap my sandpaper around it and cover a good part of the blade with a single stroke. That evened out the pressure and gave me good positive contact with the steel.

Today I started on another blade that was in pretty bad shape. There was a small nick in the heel and the blade has substantial rust and pitting. I sanded out the nick with relative ease, it was a small nick but would have rendered the blade useless as a shaver unless removed. I removed the blade form the scales and sanded it out with some 250 grit sandpaper and got the edge leveled. Once scaled I will have to cut a new bevel (this blade was never honed) and get it shave ready.

After that I took to sanding, and sanding, and sanding. 5 hours later I have finished. I started with 250 grit paper, then 400, 1K, 1.5K and 2K wet paper. There are still a few tiny defects in the surface but you have to hold it at an angle to see them. I still need to buff, the below photo is only down to 2000 grit paper. As a contrast, there is a photo of the tang/pivot to show what the blade looked like when I started.

Any suggestions from the restoration masters out there? Does it sound like I am going down the correct path, any tips to make my life easier?

Once it get it finished and put into some custom scales I am going to list it on BST. I have 3 other clovers, these guys are wonderful shavers. I have a 4th for my collection in transit and my eye on another couple.