First straight razor restoration. Any advice welcome!

Good evening gentlemen,

I'm starting my first restoration project. I pulled my soon to be brother in law's name out of the hat for presents for Christmas. I got him into wet shaving again about 4 for months ago and he's using a DE every day. So without further ado...



(this is my first time posting pics so if they dont work...I apologize)

I'm planning on making new scales for it out of Wenge. Everything is being done with hand tools. It'll be a fun project, but getting it done before christmas may be a little tough. I started with 220 grit and will post some pics soon after i get done with that!

Looks like a good blade to start with - not a lot of rust, staining or pitting. Just a heads up -- if you're aiming for a true mirror finish, you'll need to use either greaseless compounds (= bench polisher or a dremel tool)... or, after getting up to ~1500 grit sandpaper by hand, micro mesh sheets (e.g. more hand sanding).

A fair bit of extra work, but I highly recommend striving for a mirror finish. Satin finishes can easily and quickly start to rust - especially if its a carbon steel (vs stainless) blade.

Looks like I may have to do that then. I think I also need to drop down to a lower grit because some of the pitting isn't coming out. Either that or just work my way up and hope all goes well

Here are a couple of pics after the 220 grit sanding. Like i said. I might have to go down to 150 to get some of the black out.

Looking good.

I would even suggest going as low as 120k to do the brunt of the work getting the pitting (black) out. It'll make quicker work of it, and also mean less time needed with each grit as you progress to 150, 180, 220, on up to 1200... followed by the full micro-mesh series.

If you are hoping to fore go the micro mesh, then the best path would probably be to follow the 1200k with 1500, 2000... then black jeweler's compound (some folks call it jeweler's rouge but it comes in several colors/grits and only the red one is truly 'rouge')... and last but not least Maas of Flitz.

Either way, be sure to spend enough time with each grit to get out ALL of the scratches from the grit before -- take it from me, it can really suck to get to the sheet of micro mesh and/or black jeweler's polish only to discover there are still feint, light white scratches lurking beneath your mirror finish from one of the early grits. When possible, I try to change directions with each grit so I can watch for the old 'direction' of scratches to fully disappear beneath the new ones -- then I still work a little more before changing to the next one just to be sure.

Good luck with the project! Keep us posted as you.

NO advice, but looking good so far. Your brother-in-law is a lucky dog.

jKyro said:

Here are a couple of pics after the 220 grit sanding. Like i said. I might have to go down to 150 to get some of the black out.

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One of the things that I do for this stage of the process may help. I drill a hole in a waste piece of wood say a 2X4 to accept a dowel about 5/8 inch in diameter or slightly larger and about three feet long. I clamp the piece of wood in a position so the far end of the dowel will allow a bootlace tied to it to be pulled in a straight line over what ever it is that I’m working on. I attach a strip of the selected abrasive cloth to the bootlace and pull the other end of the abrasive over the work. That way the dowel returns the abrasive and you pull it back, like a big wood saw. Cut out shapes and contours in wood to press over the abrasive as you pull it in areas where you need to concentrate effort. Keep working all the striations from previous grit with the next finer grit before you progress to the next finer. You can keep doing this progression rig.ht on to change from an abrasive strip to a piece of leather, denim or other suitable strip to coat with a paste then rubbing compound then polish etcetera. Using such a contrivance will keep the heat to a real minimum, noise very low and the only electricity you’ll use will be for the lights, not to mention it’s cheap.

I'm telling you this because you don't seem to be bothered by the use of hand tools.

I hope this helps.


Regards

Chasmo

Looking good so far.