Thread: saving the gold leaf?

i just accuired a few razors on ebay and are wating for them to arrive, but before i get them i have a few questions. two of the razors have gold leafing or gold in them, one being a king cutter and the other is a clover brand, and they both need a little tlc. is it possible to save the gold leafing while polishing the rest of the blade?

Just polish around it. Even just metal polish will take the gold right off. That stuff is REALLY thin.

If there is any corrosion in the gold leaf, then you have a choice to make. You cannot get rid of one without the other. For that reason, I'd like to have a time machine to go back and slap the person who first had the idea of putting a thin layer of gold on a TOOL that easily RUSTS and is regularly exposed to WATER!

Of course, I also think the time machine would make the stock market a much easier source of revenue.

no there is no corrosion in the actual gold leafing but near the edges of it there is a little coloring. i can't tell from the picture weather it is just finger prints or there is something actually there. if there is would i just put some tape over it? would the tape peel the gold off? is there any good way to go about this?

I have done the tape over gold leaf method with one restore. You can use blue painters tape to safely cover it up to save it from being removed.

Originally Posted by krism

no there is no corrosion in the actual gold leafing but near the edges of it there is a little coloring. i can't tell from the picture weather it is just finger prints or there is something actually there. if there is would i just put some tape over it? would the tape peel the gold off? is there any good way to go about this?

Semichrome, Flitz, Wenol and Maas are all good. Any one of them will help get light stuff off. I apply very carefully with a Q-tip and make sure to work away from the gold wash. In many cases I let well enough alone.

It depends on the gold.

I have taken razors down to electroplaters and they just plain refuse to look at doing a restoration because they say you need the factory jigs to get them right.

My answer is if it is a small amount of patchy gold just polish it off and be done with it. If it is a reasonable amount of gold still there you can look at retaining it with the methods described above.

Originally Posted by Pauly

It depends on the gold.

I have taken razors down to electroplaters and they just plain refuse to look at doing a restoration because they say you need the factory jigs to get them right.

My answer is if it is a small amount of patchy gold just polish it off and be done with it. If it is a reasonable amount of gold still there you can look at retaining it with the methods described above.

not some of the gold. all of the gold

Ah, YESSSS!!!!! At last someone has the idea that it is ostentatious and unnecessary to put gold leaf on something that by its very nature, takes its beauty from functionality and simplicity.

It doesn't really do to attack someone's pride and joy in specific cases, but sometimes threads about things people have made want me to wince and start typing. I have a very high opinion of French engineering and craftsmanship. You ought to see what the French revolver designers were doing, while Col. Colt was inviting people to undo eight tiny and often rusted-fast screws. But they so often go for file-work on the back of razors, which is at best pointless, and gold designs. I recently saw a Thiers-Issard razor which had both gold and impressed designs on the back. But did they put the gold in the recesses, which is the one place it would remain well protected forever? No, they put it on the spine around them, where it would naturally be rolled over on a hone.

I think modern gold work is actually electroplated, and is therefore very thin. Some jewellers do have electrolytic pen devices for touching up plating. I don't know if it ca be used on steel, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Older razors may have leaf applied by rubbing down on a slightly matt ground (probably acid etched) to which it sticks. This could undoubtedly be repaired in the same way, and it might work well for repairing worn or scraped areas on electroplating. The leaf is so thin that edge-to-edge adherence plays no part in making it stay in place, like chromium plating does. You can buy gold leaf on eBay, and it is pretty cheap as gold goes.

I think you might have to acid-etch the exposed metal, quite briefly. A little 10% nitric acit, applied in a sort of dam made with modelling clay or a bicycle tyre patch ought to do it. But you really ought to try this on a scrap piece of polished steel first.

Krism's present case, though, sounds as if protecting the gold with tape would be enough. Warming the razor slightly and painting it with paraffin wax may also do, if only hand polishing is planned