Pitting

I just received a good quality old razor bought on Ebay. The blade shows no rust or misuse. The only defect is some rather deep pitting on both sides of the blade. I say deep because I can feel them when I slide my finger over the blade. What is the preferred method of removing pitting? I've used Maas without the Dremel which shined up the blade but had no effect on the pitting. I have a Dremel with all the attachments. Thanks.

sandpaper... you can buy the lower grits from local hardware stores and the higher grits from auto part stores such as pep-boys etc etc.

start with the highest grit sand paper that will remove the gunk/rust/pitting that you want to remove.. move up the sand paper grit steps.. then buff with a metal polish (not liquid... you want to use a paste type) such as MAAS(can be bought at walmart) or simichrome.

my personal steps are:

220 grit (if needed)
400 grit
600 grit
800 grit
1000 grit
1500 grit
2000 grit

buff with Fabulustre (metal buffing compound similar to jewelers rogue)
then buff with metal polish (simichrome)

the results are amazing. the key to making it look mirror perfect is to spend enough time at each grit size in order to completely remove the previous grit lines. im talking 1hr + at each grit size, especially for the lower grit numbers.

if you do not want the perfect mirror finish you can go back over it after you do all the steps with some 600 and 800 sandpaper and that will put back onto the blade the "grind" marks that are on some blades if you are into that.

hope that helps,
~J


ps. lots of info on this board using search function or taking a few moments to read back posts. also, mr. bill ellis makes a CD that would be useful for this