Thread: What I'm learning...and amateur's restoration

Jeez!

I forgot about this post!

The red rouge works great, however you will notice that as you turn the blade face, the wheels leave a 'jeweling' swirrly look (to be technical ).

I've since moved on, to use fabuluster (ground to a powder), mixed with Maas, and then follow the cleaning with maas (both with the dremel and small felt wheel).

Also, something that helped me get uniform markings along the blade (with the fiber wheels, aka "puffs") was to use the 'Dremel Drill Press' set up horizontally, and moving the blade (and not the dremel), so the rotation of the wheel was perpendicular to the edge....

Keep us posted, I love to hear new techniques!

Thanks,
C utz

So I worked on the blade again a little last night and some more this morning. Using the the red compound on the backside of the tang did polish most of it up pretty nicely for my tastes. It's certainly no mirror finish and if you turn the blade in the light you can see small scratches, but I think it looks fairly nice. You could certainly take it and start handsanding at 400 or so, thus saving a lot of low grit sanding to remove pitting. This blade had what I consider some pretty bad pitting by the way. Around the pivot it actually went deeper than the maker's stamp.

One unfortunate thing the polishing revealed is that I had pretty sucky technique to begin with. (Slightly less sucky now.) This is hardly surprising as it's the first time I've even used a dremel, let alone to restore a razor. I got a bit careless with the 120 flapwheel and left grooves that were much deeper than the rest of the flapwheel scratches, I assume from tipping up on the "edge" of it and grinding down in.

I also tried a little bit of hand sanding with 400 and 600 and then polishing again; that looks a little bit nicer. Something I could honestly be very happy with on my razors. I think I'm going to take what I learned (very light, even touch) and try it on another razor's tang that I haven't touched yet. Hopefully I'll get the nice spots I can see on the current one, but without any deeper grooves remaining.

A quick follow up. Although first, is it okay to continue this here, or should I start my own thread? On one hand, I think it makes sense to have one thread with a lot of advice about using the abrasive buffs. On the other hand, this was really about C utz's restoration. Anyhow, as an experiment I took the other blade that I got off ebay - really grungy, but it's a Henckels #9 and I'm trying to restore up enough of them for a three day set - and started working on the back side of the tang.

First I cleaned it up as well as I could with MAAS, a surprising amount of crap came off, but there's still a good amount of minor pitting and scratching as expected. Second I hand sanded with 220 moving the length of the tang the whole time. Third I used the fine (320 - purple) buff spinning across the tang and ran that over one half of the tang. Thinking about what C utz said about the drill press I tried to simulate that a bit more by moving back and forth, slowly progressing along the tang, no more circles. I used only about as much pressure as was required to feel like I was actually making contact.

Now I have two abutting areas that are very easy to distinguish because the scratches are 90 degrees from each other. The 320 buff is definitely an improvement over the 220 hand sanding - as it should be. I think this technique, inspired by the drill press, worked much better. Although it still will take more work to completely eliminate all of the 220 scratches.

So the end result is that I believe I've proven to myself that I can use the buffs effectively and that they can replace hand sanding at least up to 320 grit. I think I will try and complete the entire tang on the Henckels using nothing lower than the coarsest buff, aka no flap wheel, and see what that looks like. I'm sure it will still have some damage left from its years in whatever hell rusted it like it this, but it will probably be good enough for now. Plus, the battle scarred look has some appeal. Chicks dig scars, right?

Post all you want! BUT, you have to show pictures.... That's the rule

Anyway, those 'scratch' or 'swirl' marks that the red compound left can be further buffed out. Try using maas, or another polish compound and buff the area with the dremel in small circles and then back and fourth. Ideally a less course grit compound than the red-rouge with the maas works better, but do what you can. It should work down some of that 'swirl'.

Another thing you can do is to clamp your dremel flexshaft in a vise, and use that as the 'horizontal setup' of the drill press.

Anyway, keep us posted!

C utz

I have been taking pictures for documentation purposes. Unfortunately my camera doesn't have a macro mode and so I've had a hard time getting any detail. You can still tell the difference between a rust covered blade and shiny one though. When I can steal the cable from my girlfriend I'll post some. (Currently the camera cable is missing so I've been borrowing the one from her portable hard drive at school.)

Some hand work with MAAS does seem to clear things up very nicely. I had the first blade that I started on an arm's length away on the table and it really did look pretty nice with just a little hand 400 and 600 then red compound and finally MAAS. A very encouraging sight.

Can someone please tell me what type of glue it is that Mike Blue recommends in post number 20, the link is not working for me.
Regards,
Alex