New Life for an old Wade & Butcher

Not too long ago I won an auction for two razors—a decent looking George Wostenholm and a not-so-great Torrey. For $21, it was worth the gamble. The Wostenholm turned out to be in very good condition…


….but when I opened the Torrey box, what it contained wasn't a J.R. Torrey razor, but rather a Wade & Butcher Bow razor in poor shape.

The blade was beat up and scratched pretty bad and the edge has several severe nicks, especially at the toe. The horn scales were filthy and full of worm holes. Both sets of pins were loose.
This razor definitely gave me the opportunity to practice my restoration skills—and believe me, my 'skills' could use all the practice they can get.

I had to round off the corroded nose and remove quite a bit of metal on the heavily-pitted and deeply-scratched blade and tang, plus the damaged edge. Despite this, the tang stamps remain legible and intact. It was challenging to set the bevel, but eventually the blade gave in.

For the horn scales, I sanded away some of the rot until I hit solid material. I patched a number of the worm holes with a combo of horn dust and epoxy, sanded smooth. I left some of the shallow holes for 'character.' Re-pinned with new brass pins and washers.

I have yet to shave with it, but at least now the edge is now sufficiently sharp to do so.
The end result, I'm proud to say, is a pretty decent razor.

 

Nice job as always Kevin!

 

Wonderful!

 

I was pretty impressed at how little material you actually had to remove. I know you may think you took out a lot of material in the nose, but, comparing picture # 2 to #4, I would say you took absolutely as little as you could. The nose is as good as anyone could have made it.

 

Very nice work Kev, you made it back into a sweet shaver..

 

Thanks, Mark. In hindsight, it might have been easier to simply 'bread knife' the edge on the stone and start anew—but that can create a whole 'nuther set of issues when honing. Instead I opted to use 400 grit greaseless compound on a spiral-sewn wheel to remove a good deal of the pitting near the edge. This process also removes some of the jaggedness present, and made shaping the nose much easier on the honing stones.

These shot were all taken prior to my setting the bevel, BTW…

 

Thanks, Glen. I wasn't sure the best course of action to take on the damaged edge (see my comments to Mark above), but in the end, it worked out and I learned some things…