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Any info on this Imperial Warrented razor?

F

Frank Shaves

LJS said:
Chip, pit or any damage removal is a about the same if doing all on bench stones. Grind it out by honing and the bigger the problem the coarser the stone to start will save you a lot of time. If it is going to mean some serious steel removal I will sometimes tape the spine while I do the heavy work and then when about done at that stage of remediation I remove the tape and proceed as normal. It just saves eating the spine up.
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After sleeping on it, I think that I will follow your advice and start over starting with my 1k with tape. No better time than now to learn how to deal with this condition.

BTW, I paid close to nothing for the blade, so I have nothing to lose, and I can always search for another Imperial that is in better condition.
 
L

LJS

Frank Shaves said:
After sleeping on it, I think that I will follow your advice and start over starting with my 1k with tape. No better time than now to learn how to deal with this condition.
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Good deal. Plenty of experienced folks on here who can help you with advice.

Very wise to keep grinding on that razor. Chips are one thing, but open rust pitting like what that looks like is a nasty jagged thing you don't want scraping your face. Tape it and hone away and at this stage it is OK to use some decent pressure - if I had to describe maybe as much pressure as you would use when using a pencil eraser. Don't go all combat and flex the thing, but this isn't the time for light strokes and letting the razor ride the stone. You need to remove steel without screwing up the shape, so make sure you are working the razor edge completely and evenly so you don't end up grinding down the toe or heel only.

You want to see clean steel. Keep going until you do.
 
2

2bit_collie

My thoughts - the front and back chips definitely should be removed - not quite sure how I feel about the middle one. My general rule is “if you can see it with the naked eye, get rid of it” but I occasionally will let one slide if it only show up under a 30X loupe. The shave is the ultimate test!

I also agree with the earlier comment that there is no point in moving to the higher grits until you have a clean edge - you are just going to have to go back down. Polishing the bevel edge isn’t going to improve the shave if the edge isn’t good.

I’m not used to judging by a zoomed in photo, but my thought is that it will be a hard slog to remove the chips with your 4K, so you should drop down to the 1k again. My workhorse is a 2k and I’m pretty sure I could take those out with a 2k, but of course almost no one has a complete progression - you use what you have.

A lesson I’ve learned when honing a vintage razor for the first time. You can work the bevel until you are cutting a tomato nicely (or passing an equivalent test) but don’t move up the progression until you’ve actually looked at the whole edge with a loop. Sometimes you discover that what looked like minor pitting near the edge has resulted in a really ragged edge after bevel setting and the real reason you passed the tomato test is that you have a miniature saw blade for an edge.
 
F

Frank Shaves

I removed the chips from my Imperial down to (reasonably) clean steel, set the bevel, and the razor now passes HHT with my wife's very fine hair. The only problem is that the razor is so badly pitted that there are still a few spots where the pitting slightly comprises the edge of the razor.

I first tried to repeatedly kill and set the bevel on my 1k using Kapton tape. Too slow, so I put the razor on my cheapo 400 grit diamond plate using light pressure with electrical tape, and that did the trick. Then I ran a full progression (1k to 4k to 8k to 12k) with Kapton tape.

I remember slightly lifting the spine off the of 400 grit plate, but I cannot remember if I used edge or spine leading motion.

The good news is that for $20 I have now learned how to remove chips, my bevel setting has improved, and I learned not to ever buy a razor with pitting that compromises the edge of the razor.
 
L

LJS

Sounds good and you learned some. Go ahead and use some 3m electrical tape next time. Don’t go lifting the spine and start that bad habit. Sort of self defeating to use a thin kapton tape (this so keeps spine close to stone) and then lift the razor. Anyway you just don’t want to be doing that.

Yes, coarse stones or diamond plates are your friends for heavy hand work. Too fine grit and you are wasting time and eating up a stone.

In general, you don’t want to get to far into trying to restore or beautify a razor until you set a bevel on it. Sometimes it is not pitting or rust - it can be warped and curved for whatever reason. Anyway, you can save yourself a lot of work making something look nice that can shave.

Some razors take a lot of grinding and steel removal to get all the way past pitting. It can change the geometry significantly.
 
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