First try at restoration

i picked this razor up for £3 at an antique dealer, blade and scales are in good condition so i thought i'd use it to help teach myself to restore blades.
i'm a student sharing a house with 5 others so i dont have any power tools to help me so i've been using wet and dry paper over yeaterday and today, starting at a 80 grit and then working up to a 1200 grit, then using toothpaste for a slight polish at the end (dad used to on our silver at home) its now pretty nice, a bit of pitting that i've left because i quite like the look of it and i havnt given it a complete mirror finish partly because doing it with wet and dry paper is a pain in the backside and partly because i like it how it is now. i havnt toutched the scales, ive just done the blade. here are a few before and after pictures, let me know what you think!

before:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5122/...08638c767f.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5246/...9f7d1219b1.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5246/...a32bbd8701.jpg

after:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5250/...46cb1555a9.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5127/...35a46aa54f.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5168/...180eab6be2.jpg

its a full wedge i think with barbers notch, i know nothing at all about the maker or how old it is except that someone with the same name was a cutler in the same place between 1860-1870.

now onto honing, i have a 1.2k waterstone to set a bevel and have a 4000/6000 and a 12k stone coming in the post.

That's great entry into a world you may regret wondering into! Don't worry about the picture-perfect mirror finish. There's a lot of guys that like the "worn-in" look. (We usually call it "satin" so it sounds fancy. haha)


Unless the U.S. dollar has tanked even more than I thought, that's still less than $10...and it's a great deal to find anything worth working on for less than $15 States' Side. Well done.


P.S. I shared a house with 4 other guys for 3.5 years during school. I feel your pain!

its pretty cheap, i think its about $5 i paid for the razor and the wet and dry came to about $8, its just the different stones which are a bit more but they'll last a long time, so all in all, i think i could have a decent razor for not much money but a fair amount of elbow grease.

Nice find and good work on that one. Should be a great lookin shaver when youre done :)