Help with 2 ebay razors.

Hello everyone!

I just received a Joe Rodgers and Imperial razor that I got cheap on ebay and I had a few questions. I was wondering if perhaps someone could help me?

A have some general questions about MAAS and using a Dremel w/ pad. Even after hand rubbing a blade several times with towel and maas and then using maas with dremel the pads get BLACK in like 2 seconds. Is this normal or am I just not cleaning the blade enough beforehand? Also, what speed should I set it on (I have a Black and Decker w/ low medium high).

The Rodgers blade has scratch marks covering the bottom half of the blade on both sides. I am guessing that the seller tried to remove some aging from the blade. They are not deep, but I was wondering if there is anything that I can do to buff them out?

The Imperial blade has some etching on it. Will maas take it off? Should I just clean around the etching?

I am sorry that these are basic questions. I just don't have enough money for that restoration DVD yet. Not after the two ebay razors, classifieds razor, strop, DMT, Norton Combo, Chinese 12k, and pastes... lol!

Hmmmm!!! Some would say “you should also budget for knowledge... it’s not free"… however, folks here at SRP are always willing to help.

The “black” is normal, no matter how much you polish steel you will get black on the cleaning cloth. As long as the steel gets “shiner” you in the right direction.

Not sure what RPM the B&D runs at but I would recommend running at the slowest speed, so you don’t get the blade too hot and ruin the blade’s temper (you will know if it's lost it's temper if the blade turns blue-black).

Depending on how deep the scratches, you may need to get some Wet/Dry sandpaper from the Auto Parts store and do some sanding, there are threads in the Sticky and the Wiki about this.

I have a few imperials with black colored etch and they are pretty deep. If you polish the etch, the black color will lighten up to gray, and if you keep going will lose all color and the etch will look like engravings…. Sanding the face will make the etch more “shallow” and it will start to fade.

How you want to go with the restore is up to you, you may polish till the blade is shiny and lose some features of the etch or sand and remove the etch completely or clean around the etch or simply do minimal cleaning then hone the blade and enjoy the shave.

Many questions can be answered in the Sticky and the Wiki… here are a few links.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...tials-faq.html
http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...compounds.html
http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...ing-howto.html

Hope this helps some.

So how do you polish and not go through thousands of pads? It really seems like they get black in a very short period of time. Maybe I'm using a wrong type of pad?

If the black on the pad bothers you run it on a rag to clean some of it off. Be sure to run your pads so that the circular motion does not catch the edge of the blade or you will have sharp fragments of blade flying thru the air looking for someone/something to imbed in!

Thanks for the help so far! I definitely was not getting everything out of my pads! I wish I knew that before I used so many... lol!