Thread: First attempt at cleaning up a blade. Advice needed.

Sanding the razor is time consuming but well worth it. Check here it's what got me started
Category:Blade Restoration - Straight Razor Place Wiki
You will go through various grits of sand paper and I usually stop around 1500 or 2K. Use different directions with each grit that way you can see when the scratches from the grit before are gone. After that I use MAAS but there are other polishing compounds that will work. It takes some work but the finished product is worth it. Good luck.


Check this out

Before


After

I also recommend hand sanding. Move up the grits isn't particularly hard or time consuming - the most time-consuming work is getting rid of or reducing the pits. Once you do that, move up 220, 320, 400, 800. 1000. 1500. 2000. At about 1000 you start getting into near-mirror shine territory. Then you can go with polishing, though 1500 or 2k will give plenty of shine.

Without a loup, it's hard to tell how deep those pits are. I have a WB that needs some pit work, but first I am going to hone it to make sure the pitting (close to, but not too close to) the edge doesn't cause a problem. It looks about like yours, and should take me about an hr or so of hand sanding. It's not so bad. I watch movies on the PC while sanding.

ENUF2 and Basset, are you able to achieve good results without removing the scales?

Originally Posted by dannywonderful

ENUF2 and Basset, are you able to achieve good results without removing the scales?

Yes, Frankly, I don't know how to remove scales or tighten pins.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/galle...e-restore.html

That is an example of what can be done with hand sanding. Depending on how bad your pitting is, start with lower grits. I'd probably start yours at around 150-220 grit and see how it goes for a while.

I've been to the local Halfords today and now have Silicon Carbide wet dry sandpaper in the following grits: 240 - 320 - 600 - 800 - 1200 - 1500.

Is this an acceptable progression, or should I be looking for other grits like 1000 or 2000?

Originally Posted by dannywonderful

I've been to the local Halfords today and now have Silicon Carbide wet dry sandpaper in the following grits: 240 - 320 - 600 - 800 - 1200 - 1500.

Is this an acceptable progression, or should I be looking for other grits like 1000 or 2000?

That sounds good to me, maybe get some Maas or fitz for the final polish. Turtle wax rubbing compound works really well for removing those last scratches too....

I've got Autosol, which is similar to Maas. I've just spent over an hour rubbing away with the sandpaper and even at 800 grit the difference is major. There are still some pitting marks, but I suspect I'd have to rub off a lot of metal to completely eradicate those and I quite like having a bit of " history " showing on the blade anyway. I think I'll be honing this razor tomorrow!

Well I had a bit of trouble going from 800 to 1200 grits. The 1200 was struggling to remove the scratches left by the 800 and I could probably have done a little better with it. I think I may order a Dremel kit while they're on special offer, as I'm likely to be doing this again before too long. The Autosol put a nice enough finish on it, but I'm sure a Dremel would make it sparkly and shiny.

I've since honed it too and although I had to do around 300 laps on the yellow coticule with slurry, the rest of the honing process went really well and I have a nice edge on it ready for my shave tomorrow morning.

I don't have my camera at the moment, so these were taken with my iPhone, but you can see the improvement over the dull metal in the original photos. I will probably go over the razor again when the Dremel gets here just so I know I did the best job I could on it.

Nice Job. One small point tho. If you dremel over an already honed razor you'll likely need to re-hone it.