Thread: Pics of My First Restore!

Originally Posted by mainaman

great looking razor.
For the CA you do 4 layers at a time then sand and go another 4, total of 12 layers. The regular grocery store stuff works just fine this way.

..hhhmmm.... Wish I'd known that yesterday.......:-)
After each coat the surface looked so rough i was scared to keep going, but it was so thin that as soon as i sanded it, some parts would wear through right away...
I guess the idea is to build a layer thick enough to be sanded?

Do you think the wood is protected enough as is or should i treat it further, say with a wax? I'm not very anxious to take it apart again..... which I'd have to do to CA it again (I was lucky, i think, in that I managed NOT to glue myself to anything, except at one point I'd glued the cap to my own lip.... don't ask)

Thanks for all the great compliments!

Originally Posted by ShavedZombie

Dude, nice restore! What did you do with the Dremel buffer wheels? Any compound treatments/abrasives?

Sorry for the double post: I have no idea how to quote 2 posts in one reply....
For the Dremel all I used was the "dremel" brand polishing compound that comes in a little .5 oz or so size, it's red and kind of greasy. I have no idea what's in it. The blade was almost already there anyways, just from sanding up to 2000 gr. I made sure to keep my speed waaayy down and to make sure that the wheel was always rotating towards the blade edge; I've read more than one post where someone has caught the blade with their dremel and wrecked their blade. (SWMBO would'a never let me live it down if I'd wrecked it, I think she figures I've gone nuts!)

Originally Posted by wdwrx

..hhhmmm.... Wish I'd known that yesterday.......:-)
After each coat the surface looked so rough i was scared to keep going, but it was so thin that as soon as i sanded it, some parts would wear through right away...
I guess the idea is to build a layer thick enough to be sanded?

Do you think the wood is protected enough as is or should i treat it further, say with a wax? I'm not very anxious to take it apart again..... which I'd have to do to CA it again (I was lucky, i think, in that I managed NOT to glue myself to anything, except at one point I'd glued the cap to my own lip.... don't ask)

Thanks for all the great compliments!

I am not sure, for oily woods like ebony you wipe with acetone then CA treatment. The wood will absorb the first layes of CA into it thus selaing itself.

Originally Posted by wdwrx

I guess I figured that I could just polish 'em up later with Tung oil or Renasaince wax to fully protect them.

I am open to suggestions though.

I've found that the Renaissance wax doesn't do much for the ebony but shine it up. It protects is superficially but ebony is so dense that is doesn't really get into the wood very well.

Originally Posted by wdwrx

BTW, and I could be wrong, but I may have read something somewhere sometime recently that said Ebony doesn't require any finish. Does anyone know if this is true?

Ebony wood is really dense so you can get it to a nice shine w/o any treatment. If you treat it with any type of oil, you will need to dilute to prob 50:50 to get it to soak into the grain of the wood.

*Personally I'm sort of a purist, at least when it comes to working with natural materials, so I would only treat it with natural oils such as linseed, poppy seed, safflower seed, walnut, soybean, oiticica. Tung oil is my favorite as you can get a dark tung oil which is treated with a non-toxic naturally occurring resinous hydrocarbon for color or a pure tung oil, as it dries hard and brings out the grains. You can also re-apply tung oil years down the road to touch it up if it starts to fade.

A success indeed.
Looks great.

Impressive! Very, very nice. I really like the design of your scales -- so much so that I think I'm gonna try something similar with the next set I do.

Doh! I can be so impatient I'm my own worst enemy......
Is it too late to apply tung oil? Will the CA, even though it's sanded off, prevent the tung oil from penetrating? I didn't clean the ebony with acetone so maybe all is not lost.......
I'm about to run out to HomeDepot right now to get some. Someone stop me if I'm about to waste even more money!

I havent done anything to my ebony scales other than a little Renaissance wax FWIW...

You're fine as far as finish is concerned.

I prefer an oil finish to a coating for ebony (and most other woods). Covering up the lovely grain with CA is almost a sin. You might as well use black plastic.

You shouldn't have any problem applying a coat of oil now. I use CA to temporarily attach templates to scales. I also use it to fill defects. The oil actually helps the CA repairs blend into the wood. You might still be able to see small shiny spots where the CA filled the pores, but it's very hard to notice.

I don't bother to dilute the oil when finishing woods that resist penetration. My reasoning is that these woods are naturally oily and don't really need the oil for durability. It just helps improve the appearance (though this is subjective).

Phillip

Wow great job! Absolutely beautiful!