cleaning a filthy eBay razor

[gfoster]

Just bought a black king (tang says "GEBR. BECKER, SOLINGEN GERMANY" and "BLACK KING") razor with celluloid scales. from eBay and it was positively filthy. No rust, but a few black tarnish spots and there was a ton of gunk caked up inside the scales. It reeked also, no way in hell would I want to put it next to my face.

So, I figured it needed a good scrubbing. I wasn't sure what to use so I broke into my brewery cleaning supplies (I am extremely anal about sanitation and cleanliness of my brewing equipment). I use PBW (powdered brewery wash) in warm water to soak crusty gunk and crap out of glass carboys, plastic hoses, etc. so I figured I'd try it.

Well, I made up some and gave the entire razor a soak while I ate dinner, then swabbed it out with q-tips, a soft cloth and then gave it a really good rinse. The PBW completely ate all the crap and gunk out of it and cleaned it up nicely without hurting anything. This stuff is amazing, it will eat the nastiest crap right out of the inside of a plastic tube and not hurt anything, works on glass, stainless, carbon steel, vinyl, silicon, etc. Don't even have to scrub it if you just want to let it soak. You more experienced guys might take a look at this stuff and see what you think about it. You can even use it for a turbocharged laundry detergent to get really bad grease and stains out although it's a bit pricey for this

Now that it's clean I can see that it's in fairly good shape but there's a little bit of a tiny sliver missing from the inside edge of one of the scales but it's not obvious unless you really look at it. Anyway, I sprayed it down with starsan (a contact food grade sanitizer that basically kills everything on contact) then rinsed it again. It's duller than crap, so I'll send it off for a honing but at least it's clean now!

In the pic it looks like it's got a small nick out of the blade but it doesn't, just a trick of the flash. Not the greatest razor in the world but when I got it the thing was black with gunk.

-- Gary F.