Thread: My Best Yet

Here is my newest restoration. This is a Marshes and Shepherd Pond Works 13/16 square point. I have looked online and at best I can find that production was stopped around 1850. So this is a least 158 years old. I am going to say this is a rare brand as I have not found many others, especially in this condition. I have the bone scales that were on it, and I will give them to the buyer. My camera does a good job at picking up flaws on the blade but the scratches are much smaller than 2000 grit paper can remove. It looks like a mirror if you take good photos and you can read lettering easily if you hold it over text. The engraved vines and designs in the spine are very meticulous and at the expense of a smooth finish, I preserved them because they were so neat. The scales were designed and hand made by me, but I saw a similar design in the classifieds once, so it is not actually my design. Wedges and pins are all brass(sorry I have no other materials and can't afford any others right now). They are bacote with a red oak stain with 2 coats of polyurethane. This razor has been polished for about 6 hours with a dremel, honed to 12K and is awaiting only to be stropped. I will shave test it tomorrow morning. This is the best one and rarest one I have made so far so I hope everyone likes it.

Very nice razor Trey, you have good reason to be proud. Nice piece of history there.

Real nice man, you did a great job on that.

Very nice razor. I like the engraving along the side of the spine that remains. The other one in the first picture looks interesting if you are going to do it, too.

Don J.

Great work! Looks like an amazing razor. Congrats.

That is a very nice piece of work!

I have already done it, but the results were not as good. I may actually redo it again, but the blade was misaligned with the tang which people here told me was common with these old Sheffield blades. Thanks for the comments!

It's a cool razor, I have a Reynolds with that same crown and V R stamp on it... It looks like the blade is goldwashed, is this just the photo? do you think those scratches would have come out by using a coarser grit progression? (guess I should also ask what the grit progression was for sanding/polishing.)

Trey,

nicely done. Those scales do look familiar

You should be proud of yourself. Let us know how it saves.

I sanded this razor for about three weeks. The progression was 120,220,320,400,600,800,1000,2000. I then proceeded to polish it with my dremel using Ryobi jeweler's polish and then with Turtlewax premium. I spent a week with the turlewax for about 30-40 minutes per night. I am afraid there was never any gold wash on any part of the blade. The honing progression was done with Norton's 220, 1000, 5000, 8000 and then finished with a Chinese 12K. Then about 120 laps on my strop and here it is. THis razor is not the easiest to hone, but it gets a great edge quickly like most other Sheffields I have found. This razor is nowhere near perfet, ut as it has been said by anotuher member, perfection is a goal, not a destination.