Thread: Joseph Rodgers & Sons restoration

Hey folks

About 15 years ago I received some straights from my grandpa. None were remotely near shave ready but he was a collector of all things, and generally a good judge of quality.

Among those was a Joseph Rodgers & Sons 7/8 (I gather from here) that I've always been in love with, but of course I didn't know thing 1 about wetshaving. Plus I'm kind of in love with most of those blades heh

A year or two ago I got into DE shaving and have spent a fair amount time on Badger & Blade. I restored a Wade & Butcher (see this thread) but getting this neglected Rodgers blade restored and into not-broken scales and honed was an intimidating task, and I don't even have a strop to go with it.

Now my brother in law is trying to get me a nice strop for my bday (he's trying to find a Tony Miller) so I'm moving forward with this restoration.

I'm very serious about the project. I did stages sanding with grits 320 first to take out the pitting that wasn't too deep, then 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1500, and 2000, and finally Flitz with a felt wheel on a Dremel to polish (again sanding all by hand, Dremel only for Flitz polish). I'm pleased with the results, pics attached.

Now I'm looking ahead to scales. I have some wood around the house I've been hanging onto for this day. Realistically before making any scales I need to invest some time into the resources already gathered on the forum for someone in my position but I wanted to introduce myself and post the pics of my baby because I've got a little case of the prouds and want to show & tell

If anybody has any words of advice / guidance or just happens to have some scales they'd love to pin this blade in for me let me know

Jeff

haha you can barely tell there is a razor in the second restore pic. how does it shave?

yeah, that's beautiful work. i don't have anything like the patience needed to do that.

Originally Posted by ats200

haha you can barely tell there is a razor in the second restore pic. how does it shave?

Other than a couple of slices on my finger while sanding it, this blade hasn't given a shave in decades.

I HOPE it will be an awesome shaver but I have to get it in scales first and get someone to hone it up for me

Apologies on the pic heavy update, but I was busy yesterday! And "this feeling, it is not unlike pride"

I had a piece of scrap osage orange I did a lot of work making scales out of and am really pleased with the results.

The only problem with the wood was that it was far too thick. The router shot is how I took the lion's share of the thickness down. I put a spacer behind the "left" fence and used a 1" flush cut bit, wouldn't mistake it for a planer but it worked out. Sanding that last 1/16" even with a Mouse took forever though, glad I didn't have to do it all like that!

Once the pieces were down to thickness and double-sided taped together the profile sanded down pretty fast so I was pleased with that.

I gave them a 220 finish and got my CA together when I realized I should make the wedge first.

I'm thinking of using osage orange for the wedge but hitting it with some stain to darken it up a bit for contrast. Other options are basswood (too soft I think? or OK just for the wedge?), oak, or teak. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery on that?

My plan is to cut the wedge, maybe hit it with stain, do a wash coat of CA on the inside of one of the scales and the side of the wedge that will glue together, let dry, then use medium CA to glue the wedge to one of the scales, then drill & temporarily pin both scales to sand the wedge down to size, then proceed with CA process (per this thread) over everything. I figure that will give me both a perfectly flush wedge and a perfect finish over both.

Since this is all new to me I'm probably showing a lot of ignorance here so please let me know if you see me setting up for failure! (wouldn't mind hearing I've got the general right idea if that does happen to be the case too of course )

Nice job on the blade, and the scales too. I'll be curious to see how it comes out.

One thing: the original scales look whole. Why don't you try and reuse them? Some oiling with neatsfoot oil, followed by some gentle buffing, and you could have a lovely set of horn scales. Those pins looked great too.

Regards.

Yohann

For your wedge you may want to consider acrylic.

I recently done one with this WOODTURNING - EMERALD PEARL ACRYLIC PEN BLANK on eBay (end time 01-Apr-11 22:56:41 BST)

If you have a look he has quite a few varieties (im sure theres plenty of other places to pick this stuff up)

Good thing is, it easy to work with waterproof and polishes up nicely.

Originally Posted by yohannrjm

Nice job on the blade, and the scales too. I'll be curious to see how it comes out.

One thing: the original scales look whole. Why don't you try and reuse them? Some oiling with neatsfoot oil, followed by some gentle buffing, and you could have a lovely set of horn scales. Those pins looked great too.

Regards.

Yohann

Thanks!

The original scales may be whole, but only just. In the 2nd "before" you can see a crack through the pinning hole in the end opposite the tang pivot. That crack goes all the way through and I suspect the washer under that peened pin is the only thing holding that chunk of the scales in place.

I suspect it may be possible to fill that gap with epoxy to repair, though I figure doing so before polishing it would only seal in a lot of ugly. On the other hand even a gentle buffing may tear the scales apart before being secured, kind of a catch-22. In any case, I figured I better try my inexperienced hand on scrap wood that I can screw up without destroying a 125 year old family heirloom (maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but this razor was from my grandpa). Maybe someday I'll decide it's time to restore / repair the original scales and get this blade back in them, but that will be another thread far down the road so I will just retire the originals safely until then...

They make boat decks from teak, so it would probably be okay.

What about reusing the lead wedge from the original scales?

Not sure why my old images aren't showing up but here is a progress report

(am I posting too many images??)

As you can see I got the thin CA on for a wash coat, then I switched to medium thickness and hit it with 320 until I had the lion's share of the shininess gone, then re-applied CA a couple spots where I went through and repeated until I had a good coating of CA without loads of shininess.

Then I worked up the grits, completely eliminating shininess by 600 grit or so, then continued to work up to 2000

Ready for that last step to "cut" (I don't understand why it's cut instead of polish) which I'll probably just use the same Flitz and felt wheel on my Dremel I did for the razor blade (unless it's worth stopping somewhere for turtle wax liquid polishing compound or whatever?)

I also made a teak wedge. Its fit won't impress anybody here but it will get the job done...