Thread: Grandfathers razor restore step by step

The other day I posted about 3 old razors I found . Well one of those razors was my grandfathers. It is a Geneva Cutlery. So today I set out to restore the razor and post pics of the step by step process.

Here is the razor unpinned . It was held in with a horseshoe nail bent over! Lol well as you can see this blade and the scales are nasty.


I then proceeded to sand the scales with 320 grit wet/dry. I don't know what in the world was on the inside of the scales but it has the consistency of dirty varnish. I sanded up to 1000 and here they are.


I then pinned the wedge in.


I then started on hand sanding the blade. It was pretty bad. These pics are after 200 grit wet/dry. there are some pits left but to get them completely out would be to regrind the blade and that's not what I'm after.


Will post more tomorrow as I progress.

Looking good so far! You will find that you will need to spend exponentially more time on each grit change to remove the previous scratches. Take your time and don't rush it & you will be more than pleased with your efforts of restoring a heirloom.

UPDATE:
Here is the blade after 2 hours of hand sanding at 320 and 400 grit.
It has cleaned up very nicely so far.

thats a beautiful razor tsunami, how hard would it be for me to unpin my wade and butcher and set new scales on it and polish the blade with like 1000grit.

Can't wait for the blade to be done. It's going to look great

Originally Posted by Deerhunter1995

thats a beautiful razor tsunami, how hard would it be for me to unpin my wade and butcher and set new scales on it and polish the blade with like 1000grit.

Should not be hard at all. But that being said it takes nerve! Lol I use a flat file and slowly file the pin down until the washer pops. Once the blade is out depending on its starting condition you may not need to start at a very low grit. This one was rough so I started at 220. I finish at 1500 grit then give it a quick light buff with black emery on a wheel then white emery and then hand polish with Mothers mag wheel aluminum cleaner. It's gets them real shiny but not overly so. Some I've heard go up to 2500 grit. But I'm satisfied with the results. After all to me it's a working blade and not a museum piece. The scales can be a finicky pain but go slow and you should be fine.

UPDATE: came home after midnight and due to domestic issues I got piss drunk and worked on the blade. I did not take any progression photos from 600-1500 grit. Sorry. But when I woke up this morning I realized two things. 1. That my domestic situation sucks
2. I do some decent work piss drunk! Lol
I pinned the razor this morning and will hone sometime over the weekend.

Sorry for your state of affairs, but you do very good work while drunk. I'm sure Grandpa would be proud of how it turned out.

Great job glad u work ur best when ur drunk. I'm also the same way drunk but I wish I had blades to restore anyway but kick a$$ of a job

Beautiful job one hell of a save. I've got a couple geneva's and to me they some of the best.

I feel your pain brother, sorry for the domestic issues and I hope they work out the way you want them too. Sometimes it'd be nice just to go back and be a kid again, when the only thing you had to worry about was what to wear to school, what to eat and what not.