Amidoinitrite?

Or, in English, Am I doing it right?

So, I bought my first razor off the bay and it arrived today.

It's a Boker Baby.

It had some staining throughout, but no rust. Couple spots that "might" be pits, perhaps some sort of other damage. So, of course I got excited for some polishing action to determine the extent of the staining/pitting so I could see if I would need to sand.

Thanks to the wiki, I got some info on what I'd be looking for and how to go about the process.

Headed down to Home Depot, and got a pack with some of the emery buffing compound and white rouge. Broke out the trusty, well-used (for other projects) Dremel and some felt wheels and started.

I went VERY lightly at about 5k rpm on the dremel with the ~3/8" felt wheel, and moved quickly to avoid heating things up. When I got to a point where the blade felt warm to the touch, I wrapped it in a wet paper towel for a moment. She cleaned up pretty nicely. Not a mirror finish or anything, but at least free of the staining.


So, here lie my questions.

How hot is too hot? (to hurt the temper, ballpark answer desired)

How exactly does one use the polishing compounds?

How do you polish in the spine in the pivot area (I hope not by hand)?





Here's what I did. Impatience took the day.

I got the dremel spinning and ran it over the bar of emery compound to get a little on there. When I applied it to the blade, it was leaving black stuff (which I read is normal).

After running it up and back on each edge (blade NOT spinning into the edge!), some of the black was gone. So, I got a fresh felt wheel to try and remove the black stuff. It worked.

After doing the entire blade (I left the tang for comparison), I moved up to the white rouge on fresh felt. I did half the blade at first to see how much higher of a polish it would get. It was noticeable. So, I completed the all the rest besides the tang.



Is there a part of this that I am either doing wrong, or in a non-optimal fashion? I mean, the results are decent, but I'd always like to improve my technique. Pics should be up tomorrow.

To polish the pivot area you need to unpin the blade. You can also polish it using some diamond paste on dental floss, but that's pretty painful.

The white rouge makes a mean finishing hone if you put it on the linen side of your strop or a piece of denim wrapped tightly around a board. I don't know how much difference there is between the different brands of white rouge, but I have used the stuff from Harbor Freight with great success.

Warm to the touch is fine. It gets that hot just rinsing it in the sink.

If you stay below the 300 degree F mark you should be fine, which is way above the "ouch" factor when holding the blade with yer finger touching....

If the blade feels hot to your finger and you back off, you are safe...

Be extra careful when doing extra and full hollows as the edge heats up extremely fast....