Thread: Doing things out of order

I just received a nice little 11/16-5/8 admirals razor from one of the members here.

It's shave ready, and I shaved with it today, but it's not in the best shape cosmetically.

There's no pitting to speak of, but lots of uneven patina. Also, the scales are wood, but too soft for scales, and the pins have sunk into the wood quite a bit.

So, it needs a good solid clean-up, and some new shoes.

Obviously it would be best to do all the clean-up, then re-scale, and then hone it up last, but it's already honed and I'm not set up for honing yet.

Is it reasonably possible to rescale and clean up a razor like this without doing anything that will force me to need to re-hone it, or should I just wait on the resto until it needs honing anyway?

Out of experience I've learned that a honed razor loses the edge when restoring and re-scaling.

Also you don't want to be rescaling and working on a blade with a samurai sharp edge. As careful as you might think you are the edge will cut into something.

The only option you have would be to double tape the edge with electrical tape and do your thing.

But if you had cleaning and restoring the blade in mind it's still going to be weird to have one part of the blade shine and clean while the edge part will look unfinished.

Unfortunately, I was already thinking pretty much the same thing.

I went ahead and had the gentleman I bought it from hone it before sending it to me, as this will only be my second shave-ready razor, so I think I'll just keep it oiled lightly to keep the finish from getting worse, and wait for the resto until it's either in need of honing anyway, or until there's enough razors in my rotation that I won't miss it.