Sandblasting

I was experimenting with a TRASHED razor (rusted, pitted, stained, but had "full hollow" lettering on the blade) trying to figure out a way to "save it". I put a piece of duct tape (cut a thin strip) over the lettering and proceeded to sandblast the whole blade, pivot and tang area. I removed the tape and cleaned off all the debris and dust and threw it in the vibratory polisher (treated walnut shell) for roughly 4 full days.
When I pulled it out, it was much smoother, but still very dull and grey. I proceeded to take it to the buffing wheels going through four compounds from coarse to fine. I was shocked at how well it turned out.
A few observations:

• where it was taped off to save the lettering, the etching stayed a bit shinier than untaped area
• untaped area although shiny was still a bit "grainy" but very reflective
• blasting removed all rust and stains as well as minimizing pitting, but left some pitting due to the fact that it removes metal in both low and high spots
• blasting down the blade edge (bevel) removed about all of the chips and stuff and after buffing smoothed it down to where setting a bevel may not be as bad as I originaly thought it would be
• even after trying to save the etching from blasting, vibratory polisher had no affect but buffing wheels minimize etching ALOT (still there though)

This is not something I woud try on anything other than a last resort type blade, but I think I might dress it up in some scales, hone it and see what I get. I will try and post some pics later but all I have is after pics because I surely thought I was wasting my time on this one.

Any one else try this before or considered it?

Jerry

Here is the one I did awhile back.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...ing-razor.html
hope this helps
Tim

Thanks Tim.

The Clauss turned out nice. What happened to the Crown & Sword ? :shrug:

Mine was a bit worse than the Clauss but not near as bad as the C&S. Bead blasting from what I know is not near as coarse as sand blasting (healthier too). I see that it maintained the etching as well. Again, hitting both high and low spots at the same time.

I'm assuming their was no saving the C&S, short of maybe a regrind and making a 4/8.

Thanks again,

Jerry

I don't know what kind of sandblasting machine you used. I hope it wasn't the industrial kind. back in my college days when I worked in the geology lab we had a machine designed for extracting fossils from their matrix. It was a small precision job. You can get sand of different partical sizes and composition like carbides and quartz and calcite and other synthetic materials so you don't overdo it. I would imagine something like that would be just the thing for razors though unless you do restoration big time might not be worth the investment.