Advice on new restoration project

Hi all,

I've made a bit of an impulse purchase... a pair of barber point sheffield 5/8's by Flockton Tomkin & Co. They're around 1/2 hollow or 1/4 hollow ground, so much meatier than my gull hollow Bengall.

Apologies for the crappy photo quality :(
http://i396.photobucket.com/albums/p...n/razor002.jpg
http://i396.photobucket.com/albums/p...n/razor003.jpg
http://i396.photobucket.com/albums/p...n/razor001.jpg
The edges are in a reasonably sorry state. One has a few chips of around 0.5mm at the toe, while the other has similar at the heel. So will need to do a fair bit of work to get the edges back to spec.

I thought that the handles were plastic/celluloid when I bought them, although the shopkeeper thought they were bone. On further inspection, I'm reasonably confident that they are ivory. They're around 3mm thick, very smooth, and have a faint grain, but no pores. The red-hot pin test produces a decidedly dental smell.

It looks like I have a bit of work to do :)

Before I get down to business, I'd like to get a bit of advice on a few things:

1)How best to approach removing the heel and toe chips? Should I just spine tape and hone on a 600g DMT until they are gone? Or breadknife and then reset the bevel?

2) Are there any tricks to handsand while preserving the engraving on the blade? The stamp consists of a rather posh looking cat in a smoking jacket with the text "Ye Cats", and I am loath to damage it. But there is a fair bit of tanish and rust at some places on the blade.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Joel

Before I get down to business, I'd like to get a bit of advice on a few things:

1)How best to approach removing the heel and toe chips? Should I just spine tape and hone on a 600g DMT until they are gone? Or breadknife and then reset the bevel?
Personally I don't recommend breadknifing, nor do I do it. Tape the spine and hone out the bad steel.

2) Are there any tricks to handsand while preserving the engraving on the blade? The stamp consists of a rather posh looking cat in a smoking jacket with the text "Ye Cats", and I am loath to damage it. But there is a fair bit of tanish and rust at some places on the blade.
The tumbler method is one way to remove tarnish, but it doesn't do much to heavy rust. About the only thing for rust is an abrasive like sandpaper. If the engraving is very deep you may be able to lightly sand with 1K sandpaper & 3n1 oil and just live with the pitting as many of us do on razors that have a etch that we didn't want to loose.

Hints:

Tape the spine, two or three layers, and put the edge on a low grit hone and make sure there is bright steel under there first... do about 10-20 laps with pressure

Do the hand sanding next, you will be surprised at how small those chips are after you polish out the rest of the blade... start at the highest grit you can use to get the rust off there to preserve the etch you might try scraping a lot of the active rust off with a DE or SE razor first...

By the time you do these two steps those chips will be mostly a memory

and most importantly...

Post better pics when they are done :) he-hehehe