Sheffield Steel Antique Store Finds

Luecke2326 · Sep 29, 2016

I had a sales meeting Yesterday evening up in Sedalia, MO and had about an hour to spare, so I decided to devote myself to my favorite pastime. I dropped into one of those old Antique shops that was just loaded head to toe, you know the kind that look like a fire hazard to any passing fireman and the perfect place to find razors. I asked as I walked in the door if they had any razors for sale and the salesman led me to a set of drawers marked "scissors, knives, sharpening stones, razors." There were a few worse for wear Fatboys, a few Gems and injectors, and a bunch of straight razors. I dug through about 25 chipped and rusted up or seriously hone worn razors before coming across these two pieces of Sheffield steel. I'm just trying to get started, hopefully I can get them restored in the next few months. They were only $14.00 a piece, I think I made it out alright!

dangerousdon · Sep 29, 2016

Excellent finds!

kelbro · Sep 29, 2016

Yes, those should clean up well.

BSAGuy · Sep 29, 2016

Well done. Enjoy.

Luecke2326 · Sep 29, 2016

Any suggestions for honing or restoration work would be greatly appreciated. The scales on the Manhattan Cutlery Co. are I believe horn and kind of rough, with some bug bites. The blade also rests very close to the side of the scale when closed. I'm not sure what to do here. The A. J. Jordan razor has good scales with the exception of a small chunk of scale missing from a absent minded closing error and a small chip on the edge that should hone out(I'm assuming). Any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks

Matt

Brianskeet · Sep 29, 2016

Lots of ways to go on restoration so the first thing you need to do is decide how far you want to take them. Everything from leaving 99% of the current appearance to full restoration looks possible on those and everyone has their own tastes on how far they want to go as well as how much work they want to put in. To just put them in use quickly I would remove the pins, give the blades a quick going over with White Diamond metal polish (auto parts store) and the scales with fine sandpaper and a good neatsfoot oil rub down. Re-pin hone and get to shaving. It is also very possible to put them in what amounts to like new condition, but that is much more work. Unpin and start working through the grades of sandpaper. Wine corks make good sanding blocks for straights. Looking at the condition of your blades you probably don't need to start any coarser than 400 or 600 grit. Then just keep working through the grades until you achieve the level of polish desired. There is a sandpaper / cloth product called micro mesh that is great when it comes time to go to the very fine grits. Bring the blades past 8000 grit and then use the White Diamond polish and you can make them look like a mirror. Likewise you can sand and polish or make new scales depending on desires. Maggard razors usually has some really beautiful horn available to make scales from. Tons of good posts on here with how to and good explanations. I read everything I could find from Mycarver and Doc226 to learn techniques. I am not in their league, but a fella that is reasonably good with his hands and patient can achieve good results.

Luecke2326 · Sep 29, 2016

Brianskeet said:
Lots of ways to go on restoration so the first thing you need to do is decide how far you want to take them. Everything from leaving 99% of the current appearance to full restoration looks possible on those and everyone has their own tastes on how far they want to go as well as how much work they want to put in. To just put them in use quickly I would remove the pins, give the blades a quick going over with White Diamond metal polish (auto parts store) and the scales with fine sandpaper and a good neatsfoot oil rub down. Re-pin hone and get to shaving. It is also very possible to put them in what amounts to like new condition, but that is much more work. Unpin and start working through the grades of sandpaper. Wine corks make good sanding blocks for straights. Looking at the condition of your blades you probably don't need to start any coarser than 400 or 600 grit. Then just keep working through the grades until you achieve the level of polish desired. There is a sandpaper / cloth product called micro mesh that is great when it comes time to go to the very fine grits. Bring the blades past 8000 grit and then use the White Diamond polish and you can make them look like a mirror. Likewise you can sand and polish or make new scales depending on desires. Maggard razors usually has some really beautiful horn available to make scales from. Tons of good posts on here with how to and good explanations. I read everything I could find from Mycarver and Doc226 to learn techniques. I am not in their league, but a fella that is reasonably good with his hands and patient can achieve good results.
View attachment 691978 View attachment 691979 View attachment 691980

If I were to attempt to remove the scales and sand the blades for polishing, is there a good thread out there that can show me how to safely remove the pins and get started?

sskim3 · Sep 29, 2016

Great finds! Good luck with the restore! Autozone has a nice range of sandpaper to get you started. Last time I went I found grits from 160 all the way up to 2500. Good starting point if you wanna get going right away.

dmatcuk · Sep 29, 2016

I would check out the restoration pages here. There are lots of questions and answers. I know there is a sticky walkthrough of hand sanding with pictures that is a great read.

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...Restoration-for-Dummies?p=1206737#post1206737

This might be a good place to start. You can get the sand paper you need at an auto parts store. I think they had most of the grits and all different sizes at mine. Those blades should turn out nice!

Brianskeet · Sep 29, 2016

Luecke2326 said:
If I were to attempt to remove the scales and sand the blades for polishing, is there a good thread out there that can show me how to safely remove the pins and get started?

I would send a PM to Doc226 and Mycarver and ask them to recommend some of their threads. We are very lucky to have access to them and I would consider both masters of the craft. I of course will help you any way I can. Post a please help in the restoration section and you will find B&B a very helpful community.

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/forumdisplay.php/95-Restoration-amp-Razor-Making-How-To-s

Luecke2326 · Oct 5, 2016

Update, this is where I'm at in the restoration process! I removed the scales and started sanding. I started with a 400 grit and worked my way up to 2000 and polished with flitz. I need to look for some finer paper and check out white diamond polish. I'm going to send these off to be honed and rescaled. I have the orginal set of scales from the Manhattan which I'm going to make an attempt at restoring with a little epoxy and sanding. The scales for the Jordan broke as I was removing the pin, but they were just plane black plastic scales, I'd like to have them replaced with black wood or horn. If I can have the Jordan rescaled in the original scales, that would be great, but I'm sure a light wood or blonde horn would look great too. Any aditional suggestions on restoration would be great. Especially for getting that mirror shine and scale restoration.

Luecke2326 · Oct 5, 2016

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Sheffield Steel Antique Store Finds

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dangerousdon

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dmatcuk

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