Thread: Wonderedge restoration help

i bought a dubl duck wonderedge that needs restoration i cleaned up the rust on the blade using metal polish and got a good result but there are a few more things that need to be taken care of.




the finish on the scales are peeling off. is there anyway to fix this?



the scale wedge seems to be too big and the razor wont fit into the scale properly and is very hard to take out once it fits in. can i file the wedge untill it fits or will it need to be replaced.

and finally there are a few chips on the blade. is honing using a 1k stone the best option for this?

im not sure that blade can be honed. It looks like the pitting is all over the edge and it will not matter how much steel you can remove to shorten things.

Wait and see what some of the restorers say first before you do anything

IME with DD's you have a case of cell rot going on there...

First off put the whole thing in a sealed plastic baggie for 48 hours, then open the bag and sniff that should tell you much... The de-laminating can't really be fixed, only covered over but usually it is caused by cell rot or sometimes just damaged..

Second see whether the steel is salvageable by cutting it back fairly aggressively with a <1k stone/plate and see if you can find good clean steel...

The scales on DD's are a love hate thing I love the looks but hate working with the fragile things..

In this forum there are quite a few step by step WE restores, Floppyshoes and I both did them in one thread Max has done them I think Brad did one too.. They go into some detail on how we did them if you decide to go that way...

does cell rot refer to the scales or the blade? i put the razor in a sealable plastic bag like you said. i will leave it in there for a few days and see what happens.

As I understand it, it means the celluloid scales are giving off something that basically eats the blade away. But I don't really know much about the science of it.

Originally Posted by BuddyRockefella

does cell rot refer to the scales or the blade? i put the razor in a sealable plastic bag like you said. i will leave it in there for a few days and see what happens.

Both, that deep pattern oxidation looks like cell rot results on the blade, and the de-lamination points more to it...

It is REALLY hard to tell by pics.. the smell reminds me of sweet sick vinegar, but not always cell rot is easy to spot once you have seen it in hand, but much harder to diagnose from afar...

Celluloid Rot is the actual break down of the celluloid scales which results in them off gassing which in turn causes that deep pattern corrosion in the blade...

Originally Posted by gssixgun

It is REALLY hard to tell by pics.. the smell reminds me of sweet sick vinegar, but not always cell rot is easy to spot once you have seen it in hand, but much harder to diagnose from afar...

Is there anything you can look at on the scales that would tell you it's cell rot? The only way I had heard of was to look at where the rusting was taking place on the blade.

The biggest problem with cell rot is that there are no real rules to how everything reacts...

You can sometimes see it it the fibers of the scales, Puma Tortoise Celluloid is famous for this as is the stuff they used on some of the Craftsman's and Sta-Sharp's also the Otto Deutsch "Hans"..

Buddy's WE doesn't look yellow enough to be breaking down, but again there are no rules..

Recipes for the celluloid changed over the years is my understanding of this, so what might have been a rule one year could have changed the next...

i tried the baggie and there was no smell. but i did polish it when i got it. will that make a difference to the smell?

Not really,
I guess at this point you can start polishing it up...
How far you go is going to be SERIOUSLY limited by the thinness of that WE blade they are a very thin contour so be careful as you proceed

They CAN crack from just thumb pressure