Picked this up today. It’s in beautiful condition. Looks all original and still has a decent edge! I was going to clean it up with lemon juice and salt. I don’t know if I want to polish it and lose the etching. Suggestions?
I have one very similar to that one, beautiful razor. You do need to be careful and not polish out that etching. Mine is a pain to hone due to it's wedge shape and my lack of skill at honing wedge razors, but I am practicing. Enjoy.
That's very nice. IMO the etching absolutely makes it so it'd be criminal to polish it out. Might be worth looking at a chemical treatment (maybe phosphoric acid?) and / or a very light / fine abrasive like pumice or autosol applied with a toothbrush in an effort to get it into the etching...? I've had good results polishing brass threads with autosol on a toothbrush, but obviously this detailing is a lot more fine.
Just throwing ideas around - I have no expertise in this field specifically so treat my suggestions with appropriate caution!
So the salt and lemon juice wasn’t a good idea. Didn’t think about how it could have rusted it! But I did see that on a different thread on here anyways all is well I rinsed it with distilled water. I basically only used Never Dull for the most part. It’s basically cotton with an acetone in it. Took forever to do, but I think it was non abrasive.
Starting to look good. If you want to further improve the finish, I would speak to a few experienced jewellers about what to do - or even get one to do it.