Thread: Polish and blade marking?

How resistant are the golden marking on the blades? I bought a lot of razor in france and was quite please to find two Thiers Issard in the lot, a 69 medaille d'argent 1196 5/8 with "rasoir francais, evide sonnant extra, garanti" on the blade, and another 69 6/8 medaille d'argent with "rasoir francais garanti extra" and a buffalo image on the blade.

Do these gold marking resist hand polish like simichrome or mother? Do they resist buffing wheel with green, or red rouge? Thanks for the advice.

Robert

It resists hand polishing well, but the buffing wheel is a bit too much.

I'm sure someone will come along with specifics, but I'm pretty sure that even the most gentle polish will risk taking off the gold wash. It is a pretty thin layer of metal, and polishes are abrasive...

I tried it with a soft cloth and crox, and the gold wash was fine after it. But yes, be gentle with it, it is very fragile.

As long as your just cleaning dirt, grime, or light tarnish from on or around the gold rather than removing rust and heavy corrosion, then I've found it best to use a jewelery cleaner to clean the gold. The kind of jewelery cleaner that comes in the small container with a basket inside for dipping rings, necklaces, etc. Just dip a soft cloth, q-tip, or micro-fiber cloth into the cleaner and proceed as you would with mothers, maas, etc. I've quickly removed nice gold wash finish by mistake with maas with very little effort, and mothers removes the gold as well, but mother's does seem to be a bit more gentle than the maas, semi-chrome, etc.
Buffing wheels are too much for gold and will take it off very quickly.

You have to be careful because, as I found polishing my bergeischer Lowe with simichrome, the gold doesn't just come off leaving empty areas it just slowly is removed making the gold wash thinner and less gold like in appearance.

In my limited experience with goldwash I've found it to be very thick and resilient when you wish to remove it, but very delicate and easy to remove when you're trying to preserve it. I'd say just try to polish around the gold.