First small restoration success
Hi guys!
With adroit assistance from Randy last night, I managed to return my giveaway razor to shaving ability after whatever I had done to it in first receiving it. That was pretty exciting.
However, the bigger excitement for me comes in the aftermath of my eBay arrivals. I won two group lots for razors on eBay. One was largely unknown, and the other was known identity but unknown quantity.
I think, on the whole, I got pretty lucky. I doubt that these are worth a whole lot as collector's items, but I think they'll be decent as shavers. Dates and other information are from that straight razor manufacturer page that gets tossed around. I got:
a Peak by Geo. Korn, circa 1900-1925. Excellent condition.
a Presto by Fred Dolle, blade made in Germany. ca. 1901-1928.
a Sackett's Cadillac.
a Joseph Rodgers & Sons wedge razor from Sheffield somewhere between 1682 and 1991.
a Larkin
an 05 Premier by Farrand, Williams, and Clark, made in Germany. Slightly broken tip.
an Eagle "The Magnetic Razor" by G.F. Creutzberg, Philadelphia, ca. 1875-1943.
a pair of Wade and Butchers, Sheffield. Pretty good, although one has a couple of small nicks.
a J.A. Henckels from Solingen. Good condition.
A few of them have some shoulder wear such that they don't sit evenly on the hone. I'm not sure whether I'll end up trying to fix them somehow or just tossing them--but given that my reason for buying them was to get some razors on which to practice honing without fear of destroying something valuable, I think I did pretty well. Ten razors for under $30 delivered.
Anyway, my two successes for today involved the Farrand-Williams-Clark and the Fred Dolle. The Farrand was in pretty good condition except that the very tip of its spike point had been broken off and was jagged. I rounded it off using the side of an aluminum oxide kitchen hone I got in Chinatown years ago (used it to maintain all my kitchen knives for a while, too), and it's now a round point. The point is smooth, though, and I hope it'll hone up well. Should, given that it's German steel. I also de-rusted it with 0000 steel wool and then spent an hour polishing it with Flitz while watching a Foyle's War episode, and now it is shiny and beautiful.
The real success was with the Fred Dolle, though. It has slightly hideous plastic or bakelite scales in a pixelated brown and black wavy pattern, but the edge was straight and it had an attraction: the Fred Dolle logo is, apparently, a knight with a lance riding into battle on a frog. Too good to pass up.
I started with the cleaning--0000 steel wool for the active rust, then a lot of Flitz. It could still use some more, which it may or may not get. It had some pretty severe pitting on the tang, beyond my ability to remove, but it's not a problem outside the realm of aesthetics.
Once it was clean, I started with the honing. I had the idea in my mind that I was going to be a brilliant honer, and that I'd probably take the dull eBay special from rags to riches in about twenty minutes, at which point someone would tell me it was worth $800.
Um, right. Like that happened. Instead, I spent an hour and a half honing it yesterday, hands cramping from trying to do everything perfectly. I was trying to hone with less than no pressure, because I was scared. Didn't really get anywhere.
Last night, Randy T spent a lot of time with me working on another razor, and I applied what I had learned today. In looking at the Dolle, it had a pretty significant wire edge that wasn't going away even on a 4000, so I backhoned it and forward honed it on my knife hone, whose grit is somewhere well below 4000. That gave me a good starting bevel. A fairly long and involved pyramid later, I have a razor that doesn't really pass the HHT but shaves quite comfortably! It can use some more work, of course, but I'll leave that for tomorrow.
But: I know you'll understand what I mean when I say what a strong feeling of masculine pride came over me when I found that I had taken a dull and ugly knife and made a working razor out of it. It was great.
Thanks, guys.
