Thread: My First Restoration Attempts

As I posted in my thread here: http://straightrazorpalace.com/begin...erience-8.html I am starting to have an interest in restoring old razors and in particular Wade & Butcher razors have caught my fancy, as well as other Sheffiled razors, though W&B are the primary ones. As such I have picked up a few from Ebay and will keep an eye out for others.

Here are my first few razors:
Manhattan Cutlery Co. "The Celebrated" which I am attempting to polish up. I intend to continue up the grit scale all the way to 2500 and see how it turns out. After that, I guess I should use some metal polish and the rotary tool with a buffing wheel?

Before 150


After 150


Here are a couple more I got. A W&B Invincible (with the scales) and a W&B Bow Razor with a bit of a frown. For working out the frown, should I just take it to my DMT 325 until I get the blade profile back? X-strokes with extra pressure at the heel and the toe and no pressure in the middle? This would come after polishing it up, I imagine.









I will, of course, spend as much time reading about this in the Wiki and other places as I do actually working on it, but any particular advice on these blades is much appreciated.

Thanks!

Jack

How are you polishing these?

With wet/dry sandpaper. There was quite a bit of patina on the first blade, not to mention the scratches along the spine. I should mention that I had already sanded a bit before I remembered to take my "before" photo.

What grits are you using... just curious

150 - 220 - 320 - 400 - 600 - 1000 - 1500 - 2000 - 2500 are the grits I am planning to use.

On the last blade I restored (Wade & Butcher 4/8 wedge) I used wet & dry with WD-40 as lubricant up to 2k then micromesh with water up to 6k.
After that I buffed it with tripoli and then green polishing wax and, finally, metal polish.
It turned out pretty well.
I have gotten good results from using the 1k to hone out frowns from a few blades - have a look at gssixgun's You Tube videos.
That Manhattan Cutlery is a sweet looking blade - I love the shape of it.
Good luck and let's see the results

ED-40, eh. That's interesting. What's the benefit of that?
And yeah, that blade profile is pretty close to my favourite look.

Originally Posted by jdto

ED-40, eh. That's interesting. What's the benefit of that?
And yeah, that blade profile is pretty close to my favourite look.

I find that WD-40 lubricates the blade better than water and helps keep the sandpaper free of the metal build up that I get when using dry sandpaper.
On some blades I have also used emery cloth, however, I find it is a bit agressive and can leave deep scratches regardless of the stated grit size.
Of course, if it all gets too much, send the Manhattan Cutlery to me and I'll take care of it for you.....hehehehe

I finished the sanding. I don't have anything higher grit than 2500, but I'm happy with the way it's cleaned up but still kept some character. The finish isn't mirror, but it's still nice for me. I might try going higher at some point, but for now I want to hone it and shave with it!

It looks pretty good. The blade has a smile, but I like those. We need more smiles in the world today.