Thread: what to do with old razors from ebay

Hi all,

I'm picking up a few razors from ebay--trying to stay with purchases that seem fairly priced for what they're selling..the problem is I can't restore some of the older items myself, so i'm wondering what resources exist for this. I'd like to learn more about honing, but understand that until I do, its a better idea to let someone who knows what they're talking about handle things.

So, I know you can have people like Lynn throw a fine hone on a blade...but does this go for restorations as well? Any info for someone new to the area?

Thanks so much,
Jack

Hi,

The best way to learn is to do.

For cleaning up a blade, the best way to get started is by handsanding. It's cheap, safe, reliable and give great results.
Look in the restoration forum for my 'handsanding howto' thread.

The downside is that handsanding takes time, and a lot of it.
But otoh some people find it relaxing (like me) and you can do it while sitting in the living room with your wife, as opposed to working in your garage.

An advantage of handsanding is that you won't acidentally maul your blade with a moment of inattentiveness.

Use sandpaper from 100 to 2000 grit. The starting grit depends on how bad it is. see handsanding howto for details.
After that you can use a buffing compound to polish the blade further.

Honing is also something you can learn for yourself. I'd suggest letting someone like Lynn hone one of them so that you have a reference, and learn to hone on another razor. As to which hone to buy... Post in the basic honing section to ask for advice about that.

1 final tip: if you restore one of these blades by handsanding, use another one to learn how to hone first. You don't want to spend 12 hours carefully sanding a blade and then ruin it by making rookie mistakes when learning how to hone a razor

EDIT: I moved this thread to the restoration forum where it will get more attention.

Hi, I bought a razor from ebay. It was made in about 1850 It was a bit grey (gray = US) and had some pitting and black areas 'here and there'
I started with 400 grit sandpaper to slowly get rid of the worse bits then moved up 600, 800 then 1200 (1200 was the finest paper I could get locally)
I polished the razor up after with Peeks metal polish on a dremel cloth wheel/bit and the razor looks fine, it's quite shiney and only has a few black marks where I couldn't reach on the tang pivot. I could have de-pinned it to clean the whole blade, but I have never re-scaled a razor so resisted the temptation.
It took me a few hours, but I was only sitting here watching TV anyway.
Now I can multi-task