Pins Are Important

Removing pins for the purpose of cleaning is absolutely forbidden in our shop, as the original pin cannot be re-installed. We, on rare occasion, replace broken scales with ones from the same era and style, but this is infrequent because we must wait, sometimes years, for a set of scales that match. We DO NOT manufacture new scales - ever.  In those cases, we retain as much of the original fastening hardware as possible, including washers and collars.  Some pin replacements are easy to detect.  You should look for:

• Top and bottom pins that are made of different materials (most common are brass and nickel silver)
• Pins using flat external washers
• Pins that look different from one another, even if they are the same material (this is not a guarantee of a replaced pin, just suspicious)

It is here that I should mention something happened frequently in the life of an old razor.  Antique razors, particularly early ones, tended to be expensive (imagine spending several days wages on a razor today). So the owner did not simply throw them away if something happened to the scales or one of the pins.  It was common for a pin to be replaced, generally with a common nail, so that the razor could continue to be used.  I find this a fascinating practice and one could build an impressive collection of such period replacements.  When we encounter razors like this, we leave them with the improvised pin.
Why does it matter when the razor is removed from the scales?  The main reason is that you can no longer be sure that the razor was original to those scales.  The scales can be a vital clue to a razors age and identity.  Replacing scales with a model never used on that razor cheats history by creating a "fantasy" piece - not a genuine collectible.

Late Night Thoughts On Old Straight Razors...A Ghost Story.

Have you ever just sat down and looked closely at a straight razor which you know hasn't seen the light of day in a century?

This is an experience I have quite often.  And looking at these old razor I sometimes feel that I can see flashes of the former owners reflected in the blades.

You could tell the folks who were in a hurry to get their shave - they tended to "lean" on the razor when honing, placing their finger on the tip of the spine as they ran the blade over the stone. Over time, of course, that part of the razor tended to be overhoned, leaving the razor narrower at the tip than the rest of the blade.  Then there is "the brute" who seemed to feel that extreme force exerted at the center of the razor would "force" the blade sharp - leaving the telltale overhoned center on the spine and, eventually a "frown" on the blade. 

Then there is the well-worn blade which is much narrower than it used to be; the hone wear is extensive but even.  Here is the sign of a man who used and loved his razor and maybe even passed it down to his son, who put yet more honest wear on it.  Then, probably around the end of WWI, it was abandoned and sat unnoticed in a drawer for decades before finally finding its way into my hands.

Maybe I am overly romanticizing a simple instrument for cutting facial hair.  But it is thoughts like these that find me generally opposed to the "extreme makeover" that seems to be so popular these days.  Actions like replacing old, structurally sound horn scales with new materials like Micarta and heavily regrinding pitted blades, just seem to take the spirit out of these once dearly loved items.

And perhaps the screaming noises we hear when putting an old razor to the grinder aren't all the mere sounds of metal giving way to rock. Or maybe it is just our imaginations running away with us in the cool, dark cellar.

Something to think about when we put that blade to our throats in the morning.

Pleasant dreams :-)

New Product Launch! Read Carefully For FREE Offer!

Dear Client,

This has been a very exciting week at The Vintage Shaving Shoppe!  Now that we have finally filed for our patent, we can let the "cat out of the bag" on the newest and most innovative product available for maintaining your straight razors and fine knives. The Magnetic StropBox^TM along with our Magnetic StropTops^TM, part of our Little Stropper^TM brand, provide a low cost, easy to use system for keeping your blades shave-ready longer than ever.  And you will never have to look for a place to hang a strop again! For a long time, I have been telling my customers about the benefits of stropping on surfaces with varying degrees of abrasiveness.  But that used to mean having a whole bunch of strops hanging in the bathroom – not a wife-pleaser.  It’s also a very expensive way to maintain your razors, with strops running $30 to $70 each.

Those days are over.

Using the power of flexible magnets, the Patent Pending Magnetic StropBox^TM and Magnetic StropTops^TM create a completely swappable straight razor, knife and tool maintenance system that can be carried and used anywhere!  And since the 8.25” X 2.5” X 2.0” Magnetic StropBox^TM unit has a sliding door on the bottom of the unit, it’s perfect for storing a razor, a shaving brush, a barber’s hone or a small tube of abrasive paste – if it fits, it is secure inside the Magnetic StropBox^TM.  And the system  couldn’t be easier to use! The top of the Magnetic StropBox^TM is covered with a vinyl magnet, similar to the kind you might find on your refrigerator.  Just apply an 8.25” X 2.5” Magnetic StropTop^TM available in fine stropping leather and 100% hard wool felt, to the top of the box and you are ready to strop.  And since each Magnetic StropTop^TM also comes adhered to a flexible magnet, changing from one Magnetic StropTopTM to another is as easy as putting a magnet on your refrigerator door (in fact, it’s a handy place to keep them)! Hard wool felt is the PERFECT surface to use with abrasive pastes and sprays, so buy one leather Magnetic StropTop^TM for final finishing and several hard wool felt Magnetic StropTops^TM pasted with different abrasives, for a COMPLETE system to keep your straight razors, knives and tools at their best.  You can apply these abrasives yourself or we can do it for you.  It is the IDEAL system for touching up that razor that seems a bit dull.

FREE OFFER: FOR A LIMITED TIME, WE ARE OFFERING OUR CLIENTS FREE PASTING OR SPRAYING OF THE STROPTOPS^TM IN DEGREES OF ABRASIVENESS FROM 2 MICRON TO .25 MICRON.  JUST PLACE YOUR ORDER AND SEND US AN EMAIL AS ASSISTANCE@VINTAGESHAVINGSHOPPE.COM INDICATING THE STROPTOPS^TM YOU WANT TREATED AND WHAT GRIT YOU WISH US TO USE.  WE HAVE 2 MICRON, 1.5 MICRON, 1 MICRON, .50 MICRON AND .25 MICRON DIAMOND SPRAY.

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If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to email us at assistance@vintageshavingshoppe.com

 

The Joy Of Parts – Why I love My Razor Junkyard

In addition to my line of shave ready razors, I buy a significant number of broken razors that have no apparent value or historic importance (keep in mind that some razors, even when broken, DO have value).  

Why would I pay for broken razors?

These razors that would normally be discarded are a valuable source of material for someone who studies razors and repairs them.  I have written several articles on razor restoration and how I am generally opposed to it, beyond a basic cleaning and honing.  However, a blade with broken scales or a pair of scales holding a broken or badly corroded blade will never be a shaver, nor, unless it is something truly special, will it ever be a collector’s piece. 

When I DO make repairs, I only use parts that are original to that type of razor.  And given the thousands of different makes of razors out there, one needs MANY parts to have a chance at having the right one needed for an authentic repair.  If I cannot repair a razor authentically, I don’t do it.  That’s why broken razors are so valuable to me.  They provide the source of genuine parts that I need to make broken razors whole again.  In a way, I am running a personal, automobile-style junkyard for razors.  Until I find original parts, beautiful blades sit in individual baskets waiting for scales; scales await blades and proper collars.  The only items that absolutely cannot be salvaged from an old razor are the pins.  That is why I am against the removal of pins for the purpose of cleaning a razor.  Once they are out, a new one must be fashioned to replace it.

Just like in a good junkyard, organization of your parts is important.  I organize them by the GOOD part in the broken “whole” razor.  This leaves me with two primary bins:

• ·         Good blades with broken scales
• ·         Good scales with broken/badly damaged blades

 I try to keep the broken razor whole until I need the part, as it provides me with valuable information about what goes with what.  I also keep a few other bins of particularly tiny items:

• ·         Pivot pin washers
• ·         Cut pivot pins (as examples)
• ·         Pin collars
• ·         Wedges

Even these items I try to keep together as long as possible.  One thing I do NOT keep are celluloid scales which have begun to decay.  If I want to document the blade that went with such scales, I will photograph it.  Decaying celluloid is too much of a hazard to metal to warrant keeping anywhere near your collection.  But be careful how you dispose of celluloid scales…they go up like the Hindenburg when exposed to extreme heat or flame.  If you feel the need to have this demonstrated, take a SMALL piece of celluloid and clip it to the end of a hemostat or tongs, then light a match to it and stand back – the ensuing conflagration is impressive (A completely unrelated, but equally cool fire can be made by touching the contacts of a 9 volt battery to 0000 steel wool, but this will be the subject of another article).  Make sure you are outside or standing near a sink when you try either demonstration.

It gives me a great deal of personal satisfaction to restore a razor to its original condition.  If you feel the same, you might want to start a razor “junkyard” of your own.

Today's Question: Can You Bring An Old Scratched, Corroded Razor Back To life?

I received an email yesterday and I thought the question might be of enough general interest to post the question and answer in my blog.  Here it is:

"I know nothing about re-conditioning razors. I thought there might be a way to buff the blades and make then shiny and new again. It sounds like that is not the case. I am guessing that if a razor has a faint etching nothing can be done. I pulled out a razor tonight that has an etched lion on the blade but the etching is faint. My thought was maybe you could bring it back to life. Should I assume it is not possible?   Thanks for your thoughts and time."

Dear Writer,

Etches are particularly tough - especially if they are photochemical and not mechanical.  Mechanical etches (those made by an etching tool) tend to be deeper than their photochemical cousins, which are much shallower and more delicate and can be worn off simply by normal use.  Obviously, any sort of harsh abrasive would destroy them, and if that abrasive is applied under power, the delicate design can be destroyed in seconds.

Keep in mind that even the lightest scratch is actually a depression that has been made in the metal.  In the case of a light scratch, that depression is very small, but in the case of corrosion, that depression is much, much larger.  As I have mentioned in articles I have written on the topic, the only way to "remove" a scratch or corrosion spot is to remove enough metal around that spot to reach the bottom of the depression made by the defect.  As you can imagine, that isn't so hard when the scratch is light, but when it's deep, it can be a huge project.  And that assumes that there is enough metal there to do it. This usually isn't a problem with a wedge, since they are so "meaty," but it is often a major issue in dealing with more modern, hollow-ground razors - German ones in particular. These problems increase when your defect is near the edge, where the metal can be paper thin.

Personally, it is my practice never to remove metal below the original base layer of the razor's surface.  So in that respect, I don't really "restore" razors.  But I do find ways to make them look better within my rather strict parameters.  One of the most significant things you can do is to remove surface rust.  You can remove very light rust with 0000 steel wool and a light oil like WD-40.  This will not do anything for real corrosion or severe rust, but you will find it helps a lot on very light coatings of bright orange rust. To keep the razor rust free, it is important to keep a light coating of oil or a protectant such as Tuf-Glide on the blade at all times when not shaving with it.

I hope this is somewhat useful to you.

Razor Preserving or Razor Revising?

Few topics seem to be as controversial in the razor collecting community as razor "restoration." Restoration - now that is a loaded word. It can mean anything from replacing a broken pin to completely regrinding the blade. The absolute purist collectors take a dim view of doing practically anything to a vintage or antique razor, with even a light cleaning being out of the question. On the other side are those who focus purely on aesthetics. The folks in this camp (whom I call the “Razor Revisers”) don't care of you have a 200 year old razor; they will happily put it to the grinding wheel and then buff it up to look like it was made yesterday (which, in my opinion, it was) and add a fresh set of scales - yet they still call it a Wade & Butcher, Henckels, Wolstenhom, etc. I do not believe that a razor which has been subject to this kind of work can be placed in any historical context. It is a new, and in many cases, beautiful new crafted razor that was based on an old blade.

While there is merit on both sides of the argument, I have a distinct personal leaning towards the preservation as opposed to renovation.

When I was new to razors, I have to admit that I went out, got a grinder, compounds, wheels - the whole shebang. I loved making those blades gleam. Cost me a lot of money too. But as I began to purchase more and more razors, I had an epiphany - by striving for the perfect mirror finished blade, I might be doing something more than the original maker had done and thus, risked creating new razors out of old ones. In reality, only the most expensive razors had mirror finishes. Why? They cost a lot more to make - mirror finishing required more man hours, more machine and hand-finishing time. So, if I took the time on one of these old razors to make a mirror finished blade, I could no longer claim it was what it started out to be. So now the buffer lays silent nearly all the time.

The way I look at things now (and the way I practice when I buy a razor) is that a razor was subject to daily use and should have had daily maintenance. Cleaning with soap and water, oiling to keep rust off, stropping and honing. These to me are all legitimate ways of treating vintage razors. If you have an old razor and the patina is unattractive and you would like to remove it, I would go no further than Maas or Flitz on a soft cloth. Beyond that and you are treading on dangerous ground, better know what you are doing and inform the buyer (if you sell) if you done ANYTHING that materially changes the razor. Personally, I consider rust, corrosion, dirt removal and polishing to be legitimate practices SO LONG AS YOU DO NOT GO BELOW THE ORIGINAL BLADE SURFACE. This protects the integrity of the blade as it was originally created. So, for me, things like sanding or grinding out a pit or corrosion spot are both off-limits. When attempting to remove rust, for example, be VERY cautious about how you do it. Corrosive substances like Naval Jelly are hard to control and highly destructive to metal - they tend to go too far. There are other products and methods which are better and safer.

Well, I could write a book on this but what I really wanted to do was to give you my point of view and what we do here at The Vintage Shaving Shoppe. This way, you will know what you are buying and perhaps be a bit better informed as a customer. Feel free to chime in on the discussion!