Thread: My 1st restore, using paint sticks for scales

This is a razor I got about 2 months ago its a " Stevens & Hills " ONEONTA , NY Made in Germany. Other than that dont know much about this razor. I bought it inexpensively, the blade was in good shape but the scales were shot. So after reading up here on SRP and seeing all the cool stuff you guys doing restoring razors, I had to give it a shot.
So I started off getting all my materials & tool together to get this project underway.
1. Polishing razor
A. I started with wet sanding the razor starting with 400grt, 600grt, 1000grt, 1500grt and finished with 2000 grt.
B. Then I buffed the razor using my brothers dremel starting stainless buffing compound then finishing with jewelers rouge.
C. Then I cleaned it all up in my final polishing step with Mothers chrome polish.
2. Making the scales
A. What to use? Paint sticks? Yes!! They were the right thickness and available (Im a painting contractor).
B. I took the old scales traced them on the paint sticks and cut them out with my coping saw.
C. Cleaned up my new scacles and fine tuned them with the sander on the dremel.
D. Marked up holes for pins and drilled them with 1/16th drill bit
E. What to make the wedge out of? A Bondo spreader? YES!! Its already tappered and its white and easy to cut.
3. Finishing the scales
A. Stained scales with Minwax " Jacobean" stain
B. I used a pre-catalized spray can laquer, put numerous coats sanding inbtween coats with 220 grt ( dries fast for quick finishing and cost effective).
4. Time for assembly
A. Found my 1/16th brass rod and brass washers at a hobby shop for model trains. They sold the .080 hex head bolts and washers too but I decided I wanted to try my hand at peaning it together.
B. And I followed the instructions in Wiki on the assembly witch was pretty straight forward and glad I did.

So here it is guys my 1st restore using paint sticks for scales

Fantastic use of available resources!
I really like the vintage look of it. There's something about simple woods and finishes that is very appealing to me.

Very cool. It really came out nice. If you hadn't said paint sticks, I wouldn't have guessed.

I was thinking of doing a rescaling just to give it a shot, but wanted something easy to work with. I was thinking of plexi glass since I have some readily available, but paint sticks sounds like another great alternative.

Thanks for posting that up.

Great job at using what was around you & available!!

That's so simple, it's brilliant!!!
I'm still laughing about using paintsticks for scales.
They turned out awesome.

That's some smarts! It's neat the things we do to make razor parts...heck, I have some old cd-r's laying around might make an inlay for some scales

Excellent.
I have two new to me Ebray blades that might need new scales
if they turn out to be good shavers. This gives me ideas and
hope that I will get the job done and be happy with the result.