Thread: pivot hole repair

Hi

I had to remove broken scales from a razor, the pivot hole is well worn and a little large
What is the accepted repair method?

On a lot of old razors especially say pre-1900 the pivot holes were hot punches and not drilled so they are often rather large and misshapen, or so has been my experience.

if you would like to tighten it up you could insert a small length of brass tubing, 3/32" as i seem to recall, into the hole as a bushing. however if you cannot obtain tubing to fit the pivot hole and also the pin... remember that you should not try to drill out the pivot hole.

I reamed out the pivots on some razors to 1/8" with a 1/8" diamond drill bit and used some 1/8" urethane tube for bushings because I was using sterling silver pins that worked well. Other bits wouldn't cut at all the steel was way too hard. I viced the blade and made sure it was viced in a way so if it came loose it wouldn't hit the blade and potentially chop the crap out of me but the spine would've been the leading side if it came loose. The diamond bits worked fine didn't try to spin the blade just cut through the steel pretty good. Was easy to ream them out a bit and the hole pretty much guided the bit to keep the holes straight I was pretty careful though.

If it's already rather large using something as a bushing as long as it has an inside diameter of about 1/16" so the 1/16" rod can fit through it would work. Usually for a tube to have I.D. 1/16" it has to be about 1/8" O.D. unless you can find something smaller that has 1/16" I.D.

I've also repaired one that had a damaged pivot with some of that putty that is two components and you mix and it hardens to like steel and then re-drilled the pivot with good success after it hardened. I don't think I got an exactly straight hole as I didn't use a drill press to drill it back out though but it worked fine. You can't tell the repair was done either unless someone un-pins the razor as the pivot is covered up. I only did this because the pivot was large and oval.

I've drilled the pivot hole in a few razors that were slightly oversized for the 1/16th brass rod but too small for the 3/32 tubing - just a regular metal drill bit in a drill press - always went through like butter...

But reading this thread, I think I'll put the shank in the vice from now on...

Of course, like everything else in life, YMMV.

Mark

There is a thread in the Wiki or search it out under Philadelph's name about repairing them using epoxy... If you have a drill press then the above methods work but it you are tool challenged I would recommend the epoxy method....