Thread: My first Amatuer restore:Gold Nugget:Lessons learned.

Okay, so I took a shot at it, decided to clean up a W.R. Case Bro's, Gold Nugget, not sure of vintage, but the scales are definately celluloid as they gave that menthenol oder when polishing them clean, also had to heat them in distilled water to flatten them out. I hand sanded the blade with wet and dry sandpapers from 220 grit to 1500 grit. I finished with the polishing with Mass's and a felt wheel on the dremel. The pin's are from SRD, I think that is where I got them? I reused the wedge and inner brass washers. I'm not super thrilled with it yet..but now I know what to expect and do. It unpinned easily with a file and punch. And the blade cleaned up good...though I didn't want to take away too much material....you can see the 'stain's' where the deeply rusted spots were. I'll eventually learn to cut off the pins at the right height for hammering down as I had to file some excess..etc. Over all I'm confident that one day I can repin it again with more experience. I'm not certain but the wedge may need reversed (It's in wrong). The blade was actually sharp before cleaning it down, so I honed it with a chinese water stone and stropped it, and surprisingly it passed HHT! I think I"ll call that luck for now. Here are the pic's...I'm not the best photographer..so apologies in advance.

Not bad at all...

You have pm

Wedge,
Good Job on the Restore.... it's an experience that everyone with an interest in straight razor shaving should try at least once... If you like it do it again ... if not you'll always appreciate the razors you have others restore for you a lot more.... what a time consuming, tedious process to do all this by hand.... It requires at the very least all the correct sand paper grits.... trying to take off 150 grit scratches with 400 grit sand paper just doesn't work....Pinning is difficult to master too.. so you can try the nuts and bolts from microfasteners.. there's a post around here somewhere on pinning that talks about it... they work fine as one option... but you'll still want to learn the old fashion way as well..

Congratulations on the restore..... you've got a lot of guts tackling a nice case razor like that..on your first restore... nice job!!

Later.. Maq

Thanks Maq, I picked this Case razor as a start as I have several others...
As for the grits..yep...I went from 220...down to 1500, there were six grits in the progression, and yeh it took a long long time between each. I used to work as an autobody tech, and found myself wishing I had a mini DA sander...lol...

[QUOTE
Congratulations on the restore..... you've got a lot of guts tackling a nice case razor like that..on your first restore... nice job!!

Later.. Maq[/QUOTE]

Looks sweet! I do think the wedge is upside down, but all that matters is that it closes properly.

On one of Glen's articles he mentions writing a 7 on the old wedge to show orientation. I usually follow this advice but having just done a razor similar to yours with clear scales, I didn't want to write on the wedge where it would be seen.

Now you just gotta shave with it and give it the real test!

Very nice job on the restore Some staining left behind gives a razor character, I have a few like that. Let us know how she shaves.

You should be very proud. Nice job.

Shaves great!!!