Question on buffing to a shine

I picked up three razors today and used Maas metal polish with a towel and alot of elbow greese and it still does not shine like a mirror. Now maybe its not possible to get these old razors to a 100% perfect shine. I guess thats my question, is there something else I can do to make these look better. Thanks

The last picture with the ink pen pointing to the faded mark, am i being to picky when I ask for that mark to be gone? Or is it possible to get that out?

-side note: has anyone ever heard of the top razor, THE ONLY? I googled it and couldnt bring anything up.

Maas is a fine polish. In order to have a mirror finish you need to have a nearly perfectly flat surface and for those razors that is going to require something more aggressive than polish. IF you want to go to the effort, you are going to have to do some sanding with progressively finer wet/dry sandpaper. The Wiki has a tutorial on hand sanding that you might want to read.

I'm just renewing my interest in restoring and reading much of what is available on this board. With that said, the Torrey looks to have substantial pitting and will require a good amount of sanding to get down to a smooth finish. The 2 others look like substantially less work.

There are several reasonable questions that come up at this point: (1) given that it takes a lot of work to obtain a mirror finish, is it really worth it or might you justify leaving the finishes as is and concentrate on your honing? 2) If you watch the video on restoring blades in the Wiki, you will see there is a lot of potential enjoyment involved in the restoration process. Does this interest you? If so, you might want to try some hand sanding at first to get your feet wet. It seems like the sky is the limit if you wish to proceed.

In my own case, I've used the dremel for several years on about 20 or so eBay razors for cleaning and polishing and have obtained reasonable finishes to enjoy my shaves although they are by no means mirror finishes. I'm in the process now of researching buffers, grinder/buffer conversions, and various compounds. In addition, I'm beginning to think about researching making scales as the second next step down the road. This latter step would allow the purchase of additional toys which would include a bench sander and a scroll saw as well as a host of different scale materials. It might also cause me to park outside and expand the modest work area I have in my 2 car garage. Of course, my dear wife would continue to park on her half of the garage.

This could be a dumb question but when hand sanding, do you sand dry? Or wet the blade with someting first?

Not dumb at all. You use wet/dry sandpaper and while you CAN sand dry, it works much better, in my opinion, if you use a light oil like 3 in 1 oil.

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Originally Posted by Rugesters

The last picture with the ink pen pointing to the faded mark, am i being to picky when I ask for that mark to be gone? Or is it possible to get that out?
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That mark is likely to be light pitting if it did not shift with polish.
You will need more abrasive means as advised so far.

Thanks guys! I am going to try to put some sand paper to one of them soon.

As far as wanting some information on the top blade, "The Only" is a model or something, what is on the other side?