Thread: Sterling Silver Round Rod, Washers and Domes

Just thinking of doing some restoration work myself on a 7 day set I recently acquired and was curious about using sterling silver for pins and washers as I plan on descaling them for restoration around the pivot pin using a jeweler's saw to protect the scales. I'll just slide the thin blade inbetween the tang and scales and saw the pin off.

I happened across a site that sells sterling silver rod, washers and small domes. The domes aren't pre-drilled to be used as washers and can be had at different sizes (metric) but I think with a little care they could be turned into washers. The 7mm are just a hair over 1/4". Website is here: Metalliferous

Part number for suitable washers is SSW950, they're sterling silver with 1/4" O.D. and .064" I.D., since 1/16" = .0625" they should be suitable for use with 1/16" rod.

The sterling silver rod sizes are also metric, 1.5mm being .060" O.D., sold by the foot.

Various .pdfs with different silver components can be found here. You sort of have to browse catalogs to get part numbers and do the quick order, I wasn't able to find the washers otherwise.

Just thought someone else might be interested

Edit: Looks like they have brass domed discs available as well as other metals and stuff.

Wow thanks for sharing! Can silver be peened easily? Its pretty tough even in small bits.

Don't know, guess I'll find out.

haha, let me know. If it works, I'm interested. I like silver pins.

Just as a note it looks like Silver is really cathodic on the galvanic table here so that if coupled with brass which is more anodic it basically can end up making a little battery cell that will corrode the brass. Also it looks like steel is higher on the list making more of an anode. I bought some carbon fiber pultruded tube from a hobby shop here that was pretty cheap. It's 1/8" O.D. and about .064" I.D. (slightly bigger than 1/16" I.D.) that I was planning on using as small bushings for the pivot. Seems most razor's pivot is about 1/8" so a small bushing like this should slip right in and the tube could be cut so its shorter, I think Bill Ellis does this on a razor in his restoration CD using some brass tube. I think with silver this will avert the possibility for corrsion between the steel of the razor and silver pin on the pivot.

Edit: Looks like carbon will cause the same problem, guess as long as its kept dry it shouldn't have the electrolyte to conduct.

Originally Posted by tjiscooler

Wow thanks for sharing! Can silver be peened easily? Its pretty tough even in small bits.

If you buy dead soft silver it should be very easy to peen, silver is very mailable when dead soft. if you buy a hardened silver you can soften it up annealing it. I am planning on using some silver tubing for the pin and flaring it at the ends.

I would be concerned that because of the softness of silver if its sterling will the razor stay tight or keep loosening up with use.

I was reading a little about it. Sterling was made as an alloy of silver, being roughly 92% silver and like 8% copper or something to make the silver harder as pure silver is soft. Evidentally the more you work sterling the harder it gets, so the peening of the end will cause the silver that is peened to harden as well as deform to hold the scales together.

I was a little more concerned about the corrosion issue, as silver is very low on the table that I referenced earlier and steel is about at the mid-point or so so with the silver in contact with the steel it'll form a sort of cell that will cause galvanic corrosion at the expense of the steel. I had originally thought to use CF tube to make bushings, but that has the same problem, graphite also being very low. The normal brass or nickel-silver pins are pretty close to steel in the table so I don't think it plays that much of a factor there. I bought some small ether tube that is resistant to fungus and moisture that I thought would help to keep the steel and silver separated in the pivot and prevent the potential for a hidden corrosion problem in the pivot.

Nickel silver is easy to find, doesn't tarnish as easily as real silver, is soft enough to be workable, and sturdy enough to hold. If you want to use silver, use the dome, and put a NS rod in it. that way it at least won't corrode your blade, and you only need to worry about the surface polish.

That would seem to work, but looking at the table again nickel silver is also about mid-way up, having a number of 52 whereas silver has a number of 90 in the table so instead of the corrosion showing itself mainly around the pivot it would be where the nickel-silver met the silver. The table I'm relying on is here: Corrosion Control - Galvanic Table

I pretty much decided to just use some small tube, was trying to find nylon bushing that was 1/8 O.D. and 1/16 I.D. but couldn't seem to find it anywhere. The small clear tube should work, and keep the silver and steel separated with nylon washers inbetween the shank and scales. I'm planning on using the 1/4" washers, with 5mm domes on top (about 1/5") and the silver pins so its all silver. May just use the domes, depends on how it looks I guess in the end. I think mixing silver with brass or another material is probably going to be a bad idea as silver is near the bottom of the table referenced and most other materials commonly used are more mid-range, like the brass and nickel-silver. There is a bit of a difference between brass, nickel-silver and 1010 steel (not sure what is used more commonly for straights, table shows a variety of stainless steels too) but its not as significant as the difference between brass and silver or the nickel-silver and silver, also I'm not really certain exactly where sterling would fit in, but I'm assuming about the same place as silver.

Edit: This table looks a bit better, the same but better description on choosing when dissimilar metals are ok to be in contact http://corrosion-doctors.org/Definit...nic-series.htm