Thread: Sacrificial Razor

First off, new to the hobby, still learning to shave and learning how to maintain the razor. Stropping veerrry slowly. New Solingen "Best Quality" has a dark spot already that I'll buff out. Going to do the alcohol/mineral spirit mix to coat it. And, yes, ordered a lot off Ebay. I hope to get 2 or 3 everyday razors out of it and use the other two as teaching tools. I'll clean them up and ship the better ones off to a honemeister while I need to learn to hone. But I wanted to start the learning curve, so on the way by a pawn shop, I picked up a $5 Wade and Butcher "50", rusted, chipped, broken scales and all. The idea is not to do a restore but to start to work the basics, cleaning, polishing, safe handling, etc. This forum is a great place for that.

Discarding the broken scale, I'll keep the good one as a template. The edge is shot with deep honing on the shoulder, so I'm not even going to work on that. But I broke out the dremel with an idea of seeing what is involved in getting rid of rust, how deep you have to go to get rid of pitting and trying to restore the surface. First thing I did was to breadknife the edge for safe handling. Glasses of course. Then drilled out the pin and lost the broken horn scale. Clamped the blade to the edge table and started at it. I have Ryobi C, E and G compound sticks. The C is 1-3 microns and that took off the rust and patina. The E is stainless steel, 4-7 microns and the G is jewelers rouge, 6-10 microns. Worked the C mostly until I found that I was going to have to grind the pitting out. Got the finest grit wheel I had and worked it down until all I saw was grind scratches. Then went back to the C and worked the scratches out which took some time. Found that I lost most of the makers mark but wasn't really to concerned about that at this point. Started with the G and got the finish you see here. The other half of the pic is the opposite uncleaned side.

Not unhappy about the results. Nobody went to the hospital, nobody went to jail. Now I'm off to clean up the kitchen, get a bit to eat and go back to trying to get the Norton 8000 down to flat. Good times.

Forgot to mention. Used kitchen thermometer with probe to check temp of metal as I was buffing. Laid it along the blade. The blade got hot but not past 160 degrees so I assume that it kept it's temper.

I doubt if the kitchen thermometer will give an accurate reading for what you are doing. Not enough contact before before the blade begins to cool. I will bet the edge was 50 deg. hotter. Probably not enough to damage it yet. A laser thermometer would be the best bet.

Great methodology though.

Jeff

I like that you are experimenting/documenting, thanks for sharing your findings.

When buffing or grinding after heat treat, I use my finger to gauge temp. If it burns, it goes in the water. I know it is on the low side, but I prefer to be safe.

Stu

Discovered I trashed the probe with that little experiment. But I consider it a success.

I got a couple of razors off of EBay and immediately jumped cleaning them up with... a sacrificial sock and some Mothers. Took it slow. Now a couple of them are off to Lynn for an edge.

I think the next part of the will be trying to put an edge back on the blade. Probably won't actually use it. More to find out how it's done.