Thread: My Wade and Butcher E-Bay Wedges

So I can't afford to buy any more nice razors at the moment and I really like Wade and Butchers. So I hit the bay, got these, and am planning to roll up my sleeves. What do the experts think?

Wade and Butcher E-Bay - Before Pics

The Horn scaled full wedge - Had some dramatic rust on it, but it's a hefty blade, so I'm pretty sure it will grind out pretty easily.

The Bone Scaled wedge - blade seems to be in really good shape. It will need to be rescaled though. The interesting thing about this blade is the very slight hollow grind. Is that a 1/4 hollow?

The wood scaled smiling hollow - blade doesn't look bad, any tips on polishing a blade and not loosing the etching? Obviously this one was a cheap rescale on it, but not bad.

I descaled all three for cleaning, I split the nice horn scales :-( The bone ones were trash beforehand, and I hated the wood ones from the start. So it looks like I'll get some practice making scales.

I hit them all with some sandpaper and threw them in my tumbler last night.

Since I haven't gotten any comments yet, but lots of views, should I take it that I'm wasting my time on these?

man I'm envious of that big wedge at the top. I keep looking for a good deal on one of those. I have one big w&b wedge that is my best shaver. I want to get another one now, for comparisons.

Red

You're certainly not wasting your time. Regardless of what a Butcher looks like, if you can get a shaving edge on them they're great shavers. I'd love to see how they're coming along.

I think the chip on the blade will be the hardest part.

Looks nice though.

Wasting your time??? No way! Not with those babies. Make sure to post your after photos.

Thanks.

Thanks for all the encouragement. I bought these originally just to get my honing down. But my type A personality just couldn't take it.

I started with the large wedge first as it was the worst.

I have about 6 hours of total sanding in on it and have all the pitting out but one place, which is right on the spine and is deep enough that it would destroy the lines of the razor to take out.

I'll be moving up in grit tomorrow.

Before pic. Blade is a touch over 7/8.




I picked up some cocobolo for the scales as well.





Did I mention steel is hard... :-)

Oh yeah, and my Dillon tumbler died again :-(

You wooden blank are way too thick - unless you a doing 1 piece jobby or ripping them in half after you've shaped them

Mark

I don't have an electric band saw. So I had to saw it off by hand, I do have a belt sander though. So I was going to get them in rough shape and then sand 'em down.

Definitely need to pick up a scroll saw soon.

As an update, the Wedge has been sanded down to 2k grit, and looks almost new, just one small pit on the spine remained. I've thrown it in the tumber to try to get that "lineless" mirror polish.