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Joseph Allen & Sons NON XXL Restore & Making a brush

The Blade
I picked up a number of blades a while ago and thought I'd get cracking on one.
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It's 6/8 has seen better days and my old friends are back in those wacky magnetic scales. I think we decided they were pressed leather scales.

I didn't really take many "in-progress" shots so this is all I have.
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I set the bevel and honed it to 1 micron on diamond film and the shave was about an 8 out of 10 which is excellent.
Nothing gets a 10 but it's there just in case. Some of my W&B's and Filarmonicas are 9's.
 
The Brush
I decided I'd make a brush and sourced some handles and high end badger hair.

This is Manchurian High Mountain 2 Band Finest Badger
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After much research I used 24 grams in a 26mm knot
You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get the knot shaped properly without the cannons.
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I then carefully trimmed the knot to 65mm
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Did a quick test fit to make sure everything was snug in it's soon to be Ocean Blue handle
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And then epoxied the knot for 24 hours
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After a shampoo, shower gel, several arko and then TOBS Sandlewood hand lathers it now smells great and I'm extremely happy with the results. A luxurious high end badger brush that lathers like a dream.

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The Brush
I decided I'd make a brush and sourced some handles and high end badger hair.

This is Manchurian High Mountain 2 Band Finest Badger
View attachment 1335480

After much research I used 24 grams in a 26mm knot
You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get the knot shaped properly without the cannons.
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I then carefully trimmed the knot to 65mm
View attachment 1335483

Did a quick test fit to make sure everything was snug in it's soon to be Ocean Blue handle
View attachment 1335484

And then epoxied the knot for 24 hours
View attachment 1335482

After a shampoo, shower gel, several arko and then TOBS Sandlewood hand lathers it now smells great and I'm extremely happy with the results. A luxurious high end badger brush that lathers like a dream.

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I couldn't help but notice the bubbles in the epoxy and wonder just what would happen if you put the knot in a pressure can to remove the bubbles and maybe move the epoxy in further to the core. Just food for thought. If you start making your own handles you'll need one.
 
I couldn't help but notice the bubbles in the epoxy and wonder just what would happen if you put the knot in a pressure can to remove the bubbles and maybe move the epoxy in further to the core. Just food for thought. If you start making your own handles you'll need one.
You're very observant I'll give you that. That was something I did by mistake and learned from. I was my first attempt after all.
When I originally glued the knot, once I had full coverage, I got a needle and pushed it into the knot to try and introduce some glue up into the base but as the epoxy began to set I noticed my prodding with the needle was introducing air bubbles to the plug. I stopped as soon as I saw it. The 5min epoxy was tacky at that stage and there was nothing I could do about it then.
I have no doubt the air bubbles I introduced have weakened the glue plug's integrity but it seems to be holding up fine.

If you look at the 3rd photo here you can see I learned from my mistake on brushes 2 & 3. This was starting the needle prodding much sooner and not removing the needle fully from the glue after each 2mm prod. I also mixed the epoxy slower so as not to introduce any bubbles at that stage.

Incidentally I just noticed now the razor is XLL and not XXL in the title. Must have been thinking of clothes sizes or something?
I wonder what XLL means or stands for?
I know there are IXL (I excel (at shaving)) but the extra L in XLL has me wondering.
 
Those bubbles are superficial and I don’t think you did any harm. I thought it was the epoxy letting the bubbles loose from mixing or ??
Its all good and I’m very impressed. I have thought about trying my hand at tying knots also but my hands aren’t what they used to be.
I have never seen XXL before in all the razors I have seen and used.
I too will have to pay more attention and see if its more common than we realize.
Good spotting,
Scott
 
I think half the bubbles are from mixing too quickly and half from the needling.
I now mix slower, apply sooner and needle until just before the glue becomes tacky then stop.

The Non-XLL blade is a typical Sheffield, good steel for a comfortable shave.

I actually have an identical razor in the to-do-pile. Exact same blade, exact same scales but this one is a John Clarke & Sons.
This is weird to me as the Joseph Allen has "England", indicating post 1891 whereas the John Clarke doesn't indicating pre 1891. These two must have been made within a few years of each other probably around 1890.
 

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Are you sure about your years and and country stamp? I think my Filarmonicas are from the 1920’s possibly and they aren’t stamped with a country. I think it has to do with whether its for export but I really don’t know.
On the glue what do the professionals use?
 
I actually have an identical razor in the to-do-pile. Exact same blade, exact same scales but this one is a John Clarke & Sons.
This is weird to me as the Joseph Allen has "England", indicating post 1891 whereas the John Clarke doesn't indicating pre 1891. These two must have been made within a few years of each other probably around 1890.
This has been a while coming but I decided to do the Non-XLL's twin, the John Clark & Sons.

Initial clean up with a scotchbrite buffer to clean off the main rust and a quick buff of the scales to get the lay of the land.
Quite a difference to the picture in post #7 above!
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You can only do so much this way so this'll have to come apart
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Sanding progressions
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Reassembly
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Initial bevel set on a layer of insulation tape followed by Kapton.
Took quite a while to set the bevel on it but it then went to BBW and a coticule combo.
It's not quite there yet at about a 6 out of 10 so more work is needed to bring it up to the Non-XLL.
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Reunited at last with its long lost brother. These must have been the same blanks originally as they're identical.
The scales too are identical being that strange leather type material that is somehow Ferromagnetic.
I again used nickle-silver cup collars and rod to peen and keep them identical.

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The Joseph Allen & Sons (Top) is finished on 1 micron diamond film but I really want the John Clark & Sons to have a contrasting edge so I'll persevere with the coticule which I'm relatively new to. I have a Coticule/BBW natural combo with slurry stone, a Selected coticule with stone and a Les Lat with matching stone so I'll need to play around with these to see what combination works best.
 
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