Thread: And so it begins -- Walker

As you can see on the before pic, there were a couple of relatively substantial nicks on the blade. I removed them on the rough hone and cleaned up most of the rust with a felt pad and polishing compound. The cleaning also revealed some scratches, but this is just the beginning. Enough for day one especially since I have a lot of work-related stuff to do and I'm still very sick. Stuff left to do on this blade (other than disinfecting it):

1) Hand sanding for the rest of the rust pitting and for those tiny scratches. I can't feel them with my hand but they're definately there. Would 1000 grit be ok?
2) Another polish (first with the compound and then a hand-polish with CLR polisher)
3) Tightening the pin
4) A whole lot of honing (the only thing it's good for now is as a butter knife)

It's starting to look really good. Love the shape of that blade...

Thanks. That's one of the main reasons I got this lot. Too bad I still haven't figured out how to take good pics of razors. You'd see there's some pitting and scratches left that I'll have to remove by doing some hand-sanding. The scales are kind of frayed, so she'll never look like a real beaut, but I wanted to take care of the metal and to turn her into a real good shaver.

Ilija,

If you want to show details of the blade then try to look through the camera while tilting the razor until you find an angle that shows the pitting and scratches. These will only appear when the light falls just at the right angle to the blade and the blade at just the right angle to the camera.

You can even use a piece of white paper to create a reflection iin the blade. Just look through the camera and move a sheet of paper around until it reflects in the blade as seen through the camera then take a shot.

Another way is to hold the razor in your hand. I usually set the focus on the lens then move the camera closer or further until the focus is just right. I do this when I am holding the razor with one hand and the camera with the other.

You need to focus better so that the details can be seen. Your shot is out of focus and there is a shadow on the blade making it difficult to see your results.

Take a few shots of each scene just in case you get motion blur which may look like an out of focus shot.

Thanks Vlad. I'll follow your advice once I do additional work on it. This pic was more to demonstrate how I honed out the nicks. Ironically, what I did on the rough hone is sharper than the rear part of the blade that got almost no contact. In any case I'll have to hit crappy tire to get the sandpaper that I need to finish this before another photo shoot.

Yeah, me too. I am out of 800/1000/2000 and almost out of 400/600/1500 grits. Tomorrow I go for some more sand paper. Between the scales and the boxes I rip through quite a bit of it.

BTW, you might want to make some scales for this blade to replace the original ones. This blade is definitely worth the effort of new scales.

I'll post some pics of a pair I just made to see how the kingwood grain looks like on a pair of scales. I thought it would be good and like the look but I have a weakness for purple and violet tones in a wood.

Where do you get your sandpaper? The finest I saw at CT was 1000-grit. The scales are an interesting proposal, but I'm not sure about the quality of my work with wood. I'll put that under consideration. Worst case scenario, I can experiment later on.

I get my paper at Canadian tire. They have it up to 1500 in the tools section and 400/800/1000/2000 in the automotive body work and paint section.

The latter is also found at wal-mart, also in the automotive section.

I would offer to make you the scales if you are up to pining the blade yourself but my desktop's C drive just went tits up. So I am going to have to figure out what I can do to reboot that machine and get access to all my data files on drive D, which is fine. I hope it won't take too long to get it up and running. I really did not need this right now.

Luckily, I still have my laptop otherwise I would be completely isolated from the world.

Thanks Vlad. I'll hit CT as soon as I have some spare time during the business hours. I sent you a PM concerning the scales. Thanks for the offer. Hope you get your desktop up and running soon.

Hit a bit of a snag. Been working with 600 for about 90 minutes on ONE side, trying both wet and dry, without a major removal of the scratches and some of the pitting. What is the roughest grit I can start removing them with? Is 200 too rough? Should I go wet or dry?