F. Eisele resto. Pic heavy, sorry!

[mycarver]

I picked up this F. Eisele back in April.I thought it was an attractive blade but the scales were quite worn, starting to deteriorate and have quite a bit of alligator skin on them. I hoped anything I did might improve it a bit. Worst comes to worst I'll just rescale it. To this point I still can't find any info on it.
The other thing that made me dig it out was a Gebr.Burg (?) razor I just picked up that has nearly the same scales though translucent as opposed to these looking more like butterscotch.
The thing that was keeping me from breaking this blade down was not having the time to make proper washers for it, as well as several other blades I have waiting needing the same style washer.
The washers on some razors are very tiny and thin. Not much more that the pin themselves. Replacing them with the traditional #0 washers just didn't thrill me. So I made some out of stainless by spinning them on my bench grinder until they were small enough for me to use and they look rather similar. Better than the stock #0 washers I feel for a more accurate restoration.
And since grinding/filing off this style washers runs the chance of damaging the scales I'm showing what I use to dimple, then drill out the 1/16 pin. It's a quite small ball end grinder as you'd find in dental work. Just enough to give you a dimple so a drill bit doesn't slide around the top of the pin as you're drilling them out. Once the dimple is made it's just a matter of using a 1/16 bit , now reasonably centered to guide you. I have it pictured next to a 1/16 drill bit so you can see the size of the ball end. It's quite small.
Also along the way I have to straighten the scales and do all the other normal things done to wrap up a razor and get it back into service. Granted, I could have just honed it up as it sat,, but what's the fun in that?

 

[mycarver]

In this sequence of shots you can see how dimpling the pin allowed me to reasonably accurately drill out the pins without damaging the scales. Much of the old washer is intact and by the look of the pin I got pretty close to center.
The scales came apart nicely and here you can see the terrible deteriorating scale surface. And being that the surface wasn't so hot, neither were the details on them either. I knew that once I started sanding/buffing even more would get lost. So I refiled the details giving them a bit more depth which is just started in the final picture. Compared to the prior pic, it's an improvement already. This will give me a bit more leeway when sanding and not ending up with a flat scale with all the details gone.

 

[mycarver]

Speaking of flat scales these weren't. Especially the one. At some time someone had ground a depression in the inner side of the scale and over time I believe this caused the scale to bulge at this point. I sanded the inner scale as flat as I dared without compromising the thickness and then went to the hot water trick to eliminate the warp. It worked well as they are both now quite flat.
Now at this point I had sanded the scales and did some buffing on them until I sat back and looked at that center oval. With the sanding and buffing it looked rather like a lame depression so I decided to rout it out to about a sixteenth inch and decided to cut up some Mother of Pearl for an inlay to mimic my other razor. Seemed like a good idea to resolve this area, but it would have been smarter to think ahead and do it while the scales were still in rough shape. Oh well, it worked.

 

[mycarver]

Now the blade itself wasn't all that bad but I had to be careful with the very fine etching on the blade. It also had the typical rust/grunge under the pin area and I took care of this with a light sanding then buff. These aren't the best photos but the finish is very clear.

 

[mycarver]

I reused the liner washers, polished them up a bit along with the insides of the scales and reused the orig. wedge. Popped the pins back in and gave it another once over. ( I should remember to get the wax out of the lines on the scales before photos) . Anyway, I'm happy with having another little ( 9/16) razor in my collection that now looks a bit more respectable for a daily shaver.
I'm also happy with the washers although I couldn't remove all the fine cracking on the scales which are very apparent on a close up such as these shots. In some areas I couldn't get all the discoloration out. Normal viewing with it in your hand it looks just fine. And the MOP looks vivid in it's greens, purples etc. that I can't photograph.
Hope you found this somewhat interesting and maybe it provided some food for thought for your next resto.

The translation as near as I can make out is,," For tough beard and tender skin"

 

[jred]

Beautiful job. You obviously have more patience than I do.

I don't think you ever need to apologize for too many pics, just when there are too few

 

[kirk 988]

they look great i love the scales
what compounds are you using on your buffer ?

with the razor on the left my vintage TI has the same inlay i wonder if they had the scales made from another source and both company bought the scales off that source

 

[Doc226]

Very nice as always.

 

[mycarver]

Thanks guys!
I do think several manufactures did use some of the same scales. Looking though some of my old barbershop ads there were several manufactures offering a variety of scales to "bling out " your own razor. And I'm sure there were manufacturers that outsourced the scales.
The compounds for the most part are the typical ones found in addition to the common polishes and waxes.

 

[malocchio]

gorgeous piece of shaving art !

 

[mycarver]

Kirk 988. My answer might seem evasive but the truth is I run 5 different buffers with around 20 or so various wheels , loose wound, stitched, muslin etc. to which ( each is dedicated) any number of compounds are used. Black, white, red, green etc. Add speed variations to each combination and it can get boggling.
It depends what I'm trying to accomplish at any given time. Scales,,, are they wood and what's the finish? Bone, horn, acrylic etc. all get treated somewhat differently.
As far as steel goes this is where I do the least amount of buffing . If I have to take more than one or two passes to get a shine I've done something wrong up to that point. A buffer doesn't remove pits, scratches, rust because in my personal opinion that isn't what its purpose is. If I would ever try to use a buffer in this fashion I'd end up with ripples, softened over pits , edges on the shaft and shoulders that are now rounded over globs of steel and loose their crispness. Or in the case of the file work I did on my customs , the defined edges from the file work would now be all rounded over . Shiny,, but not crisp looking as I believe they should. So in another way,, it hinges on just what condition the item you have in your hands is in,, and what you intend it to look like.
My efforts at restoration is to remove all ( or as much as I can) the blemishes etc. and at the same time keep the razor looking as it would have from the factory. Silly maybe but that's my goal.
So the short answer to what compounds I use is,,, it depends.There is no one magic bullet.

 

[AjaxLepinski]

Awsome!

 

[mycarver]

Thanks guys! The best part of all this is it's one terrific shaver. It seems like a toy compared to some of my others but it had no problem getting the job done in fine style.