Thread: What next?

Alright, so I am working on sanding down a couple of razors. With a wade and butcher being my favorite of the bunch. This being my first restore, I am not sure how much sanding is a good idea. I want to keep the lettering intact as much as possible. But I do not want any pits or scars coming back to haunt me by becoming water reservoirs and rusting all over again. So when I go to polish the razor up, will it get into the nooks and cranies and polish up the pits as well? I know it will not get rid of them, as that is what sanding is for, but does it get the... tarnish/oxidation out of them?

What would you guys do to this razor at this point? sand it further to get rid of the slight pitting, possibly removing the nice lettering? or go ahead and polish it up, put some new scales on, and send it out to get honed?

Below are some before and after pics.

On a side note, how much trouble is the tang hole going to give me? Its large and uneven, like someone tried to drill it from both ends...

Nice looking blade! The lettering is what makes it so nice looking to me... so I would definitely be happy to live with some pitting to keep the lettering. Might mean forgoing a mirror finish though.

The best way to find out what the polish will do is to try it. Try some polish in a spot of concern and see what ya think... you can always drop back to more sanding if desired.

As to the pivot / tang hole, you have 3 options.

1 - live with it, and the play / slop in the joint (not much of an option... but an option non-the-less)

2 - Fill it with an epoxy or peened metal (usually aluminum) and re-drill to proper size.

3 Fabricate a bushing using brass tubing from the local hobby store.

For options 2 & 3 you can find info in the restore help files and or a search.

What are your plans for the scales? Anxious to see the finished product.

I would stop sanding and keep the lettering.

By the way, you can remove the wire holding the scales together and epoxy glue the pieces together. Then polish up the scales and they will look like new. I'm pretty sure they are buffalo horn. Even after a hundred years or so, buffalo horn can polish up nicely.

I would leave the pitting. I wm working on a wedge and an old Genco right now, and the Gencon has some SERIOUS pitting on the spine and face. I am going to polish what I can and leave the pits.

That blade is what the tumbler method was designed for....
Done correctly it could look brand new again

Originally Posted by PensiveDragon

Alright, so I am working on sanding down a couple of razors. With a wade and butcher being my favorite of the bunch. This being my first restore, I am not sure how much sanding is a good idea. I want to keep the lettering intact as much as possible. But I do not want any pits or scars coming back to haunt me by becoming water reservoirs and rusting all over again. So when I go to polish the razor up, will it get into the nooks and cranies and polish up the pits as well? I know it will not get rid of them, as that is what sanding is for, but does it get the... tarnish/oxidation out of them?

What would you guys do to this razor at this point? sand it further to get rid of the slight pitting, possibly removing the nice lettering? or go ahead and polish it up, put some new scales on, and send it out to get honed?

Below are some before and after pics.

On a side note, how much trouble is the tang hole going to give me? Its large and uneven, like someone tried to drill it from both ends...

As the proud owner of a new tumbler, I'll agree with Glen on this one. There's a massive thread detailing what that means here:
http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...mentation.html

Skip to pages 5 & 6 for some images. Now we don't expect you to go out and buy a tumbler for just this razor so I'd suggest that if you're going to send it to somebody for honing, ask them if they have a tumbler and if they wouldn't mind throwing yours in for a few days to clean it up.

If your interest is doing it yourself and not sending it out then I'd say just use some polish if you want to keep the lettering for now. Sanding is really dependent upon how deep that etching is.

Tumbler my brother... Can I get an AMEN!!

I agree 100% with Glen, these blades are dying to go for a spin in a tumbler and they are going to look so good after their tumbler vacation.

I had a few dirty blades with etchings I needed to keep, and the tumbler has been the best solution I've seen yet.

Originally Posted by shooter1

Nice looking blade! The lettering is what makes it so nice looking to me... so I would definitely be happy to live with some pitting to keep the lettering. Might mean forgoing a mirror finish though.

The best way to find out what the polish will do is to try it. Try some polish in a spot of concern and see what ya think... you can always drop back to more sanding if desired.

As to the pivot / tang hole, you have 3 options.

1 - live with it, and the play / slop in the joint (not much of an option... but an option non-the-less)

2 - Fill it with an epoxy or peened metal (usually aluminum) and re-drill to proper size.

3 Fabricate a bushing using brass tubing from the local hobby store.

For options 2 & 3 you can find info in the restore help files and or a search.

What are your plans for the scales? Anxious to see the finished product.

That is what I was afraid of. This being my first restore, I do not have any of the items needed to do such modifications. I was hoping to just clean it up to a point where I could put some prefab scales on it and send it out to hone...

As for gluing the broken piece back onto the scales... I considered, and am still considering it. But it is a fairly large and jagged chunk. I doubt it would look anything 'like new' but it could work I suppose. The only set back being I have *ahem* temporarily stored it in an undiscovered location.

I would like to get a tumbler. I had read that thread before, and it seems ideal for me. My problem is I live in Canada, so I can not buy it off any of the very useful sites the rest of you get to use. And I have yet to have much luck with local stores.

Anyway, thanks for the replys guys. I think I will have to table this one for now. though I really wanted to try this slicer out as soon as possible. Oh well.

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