Start of first resto!

So, I've begun work on my first restoration. It's a heavily worn Dovo 24 that I picked up in an antique shop for 30 bucks. It had some serious rust, tarnish and pitting pretty much all across the blade (sorry, forgot to take pics before I began work...too excited!), as well as what appears to be a small burn on one of the scales. I don't know anything about removing scales (it's on my to-do list), so i basically just worked around the pivot, but eventually I'll get behind there too. All the work was done using a Jet P60, a 60 grit flapper sanding wheel, using a cordless drill on low speed (I found it was easier to control the speed with a cordless than with a dremel or rotary drill) in a bench vice. I used a light cutting oil as lubricant over the blade.

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as you can see, while eating through the pitting near the base of the blade, I also had a nice little chomp out of the edge. Nothing a little breadknifing wont fix, but still, it ticked me off. I still have lots of sanding to do by hand with some finer grits, but everyone is always looking for an easier way to do things and seeing as I hadn't seen anyone post about using these wheels before I thought I'd share my results. The wheel itself is basically just strips of 60 grit sandpaper stemming from a central hub. It can be just as dangerous as any rotary aid, but, i think the results are pretty decent. I learned alot from doing the work on this one, mistakes I dont see myself making in the future. I tried not to do too much where the stamping was, as it was already starting to wear when I got it, so I may have some difficulty getting the tang cleaned up proper. Anyone have any tips for cleaning out the stamping itself? I was thinking toothpick with metal polish on it, but I'm not sure how that will go.

I suppose I also should note that those scratches in it are not as deep as they seem, the camera is a bit unforgiving. The specs you are seeing on the blade are dust/lint and not pitting, except for near the tang side of the blade edge, which I didn't want to burn through any worse.

Those pictures sure are large! If you don't have a photo editing program on your computer, consider using something like Picnic or some other free online photo editor. I use Picnic myself sometimes, it is fairly fast and easy to use. You can find them at Picnik

From what I could see, it looks like you got rid of all rust and tarnish, and most of the pitting. Too bad about the small nick at the toe, and the small frown near the heel. The blade looks like it should come out nicely once you get it finished, and I'm sure it will give a nice comfortable shave once it's done. Good job, grats :)

That looks good. Why didn't you unscale it? If you get a chance check out my video on breadknifing. It is in the pacific NW meet thread, Glen did quick work of that edge and didn't remove most of the metal. He actually did a couple and none took more than 5 minutes.
I have been thinking about using my flap wheels since I had to give up my shop. I make my own flappers. Some day I will have to do a tutorial on that.

-G

I just havn't learned how to do it just yet, and I don't want to screw anything up! hah

Oh my browser crashed!

Also,

This should be default size for shave of the day!

:)

heh. sorry again about the size. i'll see if I can re-size them and edit the posts with the new size of pics in.

I use this resizer when I want to scale down a batch of pics, and its free :)

That is a rather high end razor to start on...

I'd also be very careful with the dremel, because FB's are very thinly ground razors. Too much heat or too much metal removal, and that's all she wrote.

And if you could go back and resize the photos and re-upload them, that would be very helpful.

Images all resized and re-upped. Sorry about that. Apparently my phone takes gigantic pictures! Hah.

As for it being a high-end razor, if you would believe it, it's the cheapest one I could find that was in rough condition. I would have rathered something a little junkier to start on, but it's all about the dollars. Hopefully I don't botch things too bad on it!

I really took my time with it, paying attention to the direction of rotation to the blade. I found with the wheels, aside from doing a kind of final buff to it, it's best to use the edge and just work it in strips. The oil did a good job of keeping things cool and smooth, but because it was sanding fast, it required quite a bit of wiping and re-applying of oil. I'm not too sure why it wore away the small little frown at the heel, I wasn't using excess pressure or rolling the edge, so I can only guess that it had been previously thinned down.

I was also having a bit of difficulty getting into the grooves at the heel of the blade. Is there an easy way to get into there with sandpaper?

Well, I decided since I still had some free time today that I would look up how to unpin. So I got that done and did a bit more clean up on the razor. There is a bit of pitting where the scales were covering, but I'm not entirely sure that there is much point in cleaning that area up, as it's just going to get covered again. What do you guys think?

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