Today I received the second W&B. This one didn't get away, it is a hefty W&B for barber's...right away I got to work on it; I have attached some pics and it is by no means finished; this puppy is going to take me many hours of work in the HOG-O-Buffer The blade arrived in a nice coffin; I consulted the books and the blade dates back to 1845. I know the box belongs to a Frederick Reynolds razor The following plates show the blade being cleaned using 220 grit...I plan to move to 400 grit next. The scales are ok and I plan not to replace them The weather was steamy hot yesterday here in Miami, so I stayed indoors most of the day; I also had a chance to work quite a bit on the W&B for Barber’s use. The blade took quite a nice sheen; not the shine produced by an electric buffer; but a nice “warm” shine which is the product of hours of buffing/cleaning by hand, and there is a difference; just like the contrast between leather and vinyl . I confess that there is some pitting towards the toe and a small spot in the middle towards the edge (which had me worried; but it turned out ok) and can’t be removed unless much metal is taken away in those areas. Attached are a couple of photos of the almost finished product, I still need to clean and buff the scales and need to take out some scratches with Toff's magic erasor; interesting while doing some preliminary cleaning with Flitz, one scale showed the name of the prior owner faintly scratched in Spencerian script. Honing regiment: The temptation was great so I yielded to it. I honed the W&B on the full range of Naniwas . The first order of business was to establish the bevel, I accomplished this with the 1K with slurry from a Norton prep stone. No problem there, the blade was shaving arm hair, and true to a wedge it did it silently. There were some micro ships toward the toe of the blade, I had to work those out to get to “clean metal” the rest was a down-hill battle with the rest of the Naniwas sharpening and polishing the bevel, it now looks like a mirror, thought I need to do some minor work towards the very tip of the blade. Results: I shaved last night; I am going to post the results in today’s SOTD in full detail. Take care. HOG The blade was cleaned/polished with 400, 800, 1000 and 1500 w/d paper
What they said. I have a W&B in original scales that Glen cleaned up for me. They are really nice and work well too. Heavy as hell but very good razors none-the-less.
