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My vintage Gillette razor cleaning experience

Walgreens carries Maas and Scrubbing bubbles (get the aerosol kind; I think it works better)
Sallys Beauty Supplies carries barbicide.
 
Copy that. For Barbicide call up local beauty supply places. There most likely will be one near you since there is one in this small, small town I live in. Barbicide will pretty much kill anything that could be residing on and in your blades. Scrubbing Bubbles of any sort will be good to go, I will take a picture of ours tomorrow for yeah. If you can't find Maas, I would order some off line. It is different than Brasso so it took me a bit to get it working but it works great. For bristles I would say medium or soft. I use medium right now I believe. They came in a 3 pack for about a dollar thirty something at Walgreens.
For the underside use Qtips and for crevices wrap your brush with a soft cloth you used to shine the rest of the razor and brush and scrub to remove. Good luck:thumbup1:
 
I used zymol on a couple of tarnished steel and rhodium plated items and found it superb. Used original formula zymol cleaner wax. Smells wonderful and is very mild so won't degrade any plating / finishing. Applied a light coating and let it dry then polished off with an old tea shirt and finished with q-tips.

But this should be final stage after 'sterilisation.' Good Luck.
 
For what it's worth, CLR states on it's label that the cleaned item should be rinsed in cold water after three minutes of exposure. It straightened my F4 Fat Boy right out when it had a "squeaky" TTO and height adjustment when neither Scrubbing Bubbles nor hot water did the trick. Cleaning took about 10 seconds. If you remember the old TV commercials, they're no joke.

Use the right tool for the job, "work smarter not harder". ;)
 
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luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
Word to the wise;

Documented cases on B&B of fellows who boiled their Nickel Plated Razors in CLR or other chemicals and they came out pink.

Don't overkill.
There are people on this board who literally have successfully cleaned hundreds and hundreds of razors. Listen to them, there is no need to re-invent the wheel.
 
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Word to the wise;

Documented cases on B&B of fellows who boiled their Nickel Plated Razors in CLR or other chemicals and they came out pink.

Don't overkill.
There are people on this board who literally have successfully cleaned hundreds and hundreds of razors. Listen to them, there is no need to re-invent the wheel.

People boiled plated metal in a solution that wikipedia states "ts ingredients include water, lactic acid, gluconic acid, glycolic acid, sulfamic acid, citric acid, and surfactants"?

That's bad, mmkay.
 
I just acquired a Fatboy so this thread was very timely for me.

I soaked it in hot tap water for a few minutes, followed by a generous spray of Scrubbing Bubbles. I let it sit for a couple of minutes and then went at it with a toothbrush.

It cleaned up great! Nice and shiny, and it turns out the paint in the numbers is largely intact (they numbers were white when I got it). Sorry, no pics yet...

Thanks to everyone for this great tip!
 
I aquired my razor last year & intended on posting a picture at that time after reading this link/post for help on maintaining it. When it arrived it was already pretty clean, but I wanted to disinfect it. I used some Barbacide my girlfriend had around. It seemed to me that it removed some of the paint from the numbering on the cut adjustment dial, but I admit I may have left in in the Barbacide a little too long. Being a vintage razor it may have just been ready to fleck off anyhow & at least now I felt it was safe to use.

So now, after a year of using it, I noticed it started to become difficult to open & a dirty from use & soap scum. I found myself here again looking for tips on maintaining it & thought I'd share my experiences with cleaning it up.

I looked for Scrubbing bubbles but we were fresh out, so I used Lysol kitchen & bath cleaner because it's what I had around and it worked great. I sprayed it throughly & cleaned it gently using an old toothbrush and about as much pressure as I'd use while brushing my teeth.(I don't know what bristle type, but I don't think it would have mattered). I rinsed it with warm water. Next I sprayed WD40 into the top in the center area where the pin comes up for opening the doors for blade replacement & worked the action back & forth until it was smooth. I also worked the action for the cut adjustment to smooth it up as well. After that I rinsed it again with warm water & did another light cleaning with the Lysol to knock off the residual WD40. I dried it with some old t-shirt material(skivvies actually) at which point it really looked pretty nice. For good measure I lightly polished it with Mothers mag & aluminum polish which added a nice touch to the shine since I was going to photograph it for this post.

I hope this is helpful to others looking to maintain they're vintage razors & happy shaving.
 

Luc

"To Wiki or Not To Wiki, That's The Question".
Staff member
I aquired my razor last year & intended on posting a picture at that time after reading this link/post for help on maintaining it. When it arrived it was already pretty clean, but I wanted to disinfect it. I used some Barbacide my girlfriend had around. It seemed to me that it removed some of the paint from the numbering on the cut adjustment dial, but I admit I may have left in in the Barbacide a little too long. Being a vintage razor it may have just been ready to fleck off anyhow & at least now I felt it was safe to use.

So now, after a year of using it, I noticed it started to become difficult to open & a dirty from use & soap scum. I found myself here again looking for tips on maintaining it & thought I'd share my experiences with cleaning it up.

I looked for Scrubbing bubbles but we were fresh out, so I used Lysol kitchen & bath cleaner because it's what I had around and it worked great. I sprayed it throughly & cleaned it gently using an old toothbrush and about as much pressure as I'd use while brushing my teeth.(I don't know what bristle type, but I don't think it would have mattered). I rinsed it with warm water. Next I sprayed WD40 into the top in the center area where the pin comes up for opening the doors for blade replacement & worked the action back & forth until it was smooth. I also worked the action for the cut adjustment to smooth it up as well. After that I rinsed it again with warm water & did another light cleaning with the Lysol to knock off the residual WD40. I dried it with some old t-shirt material(skivvies actually) at which point it really looked pretty nice. For good measure I lightly polished it with Mothers mag & aluminum polish which added a nice touch to the shine since I was going to photograph it for this post.

I hope this is helpful to others looking to maintain they're vintage razors & happy shaving.

Welcome to B&B and nice work!
 
I soaked a gross razor in a bowl of cold water for an hour, then attacked it with dish soap and a toothbrush. Excellent results. Just need to mix up some barbicide for a dip.

Phil
 
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