Thread: First razor and 'hello'

Hello everyone!

I've been interested in straight razor shaving for a while now but i've finally bought my first razor. I stumbled apon a Boker 'King Cutter' today at an antique shop in Montreal. It was 40$ and seemed to be in pretty good shape apart from the discoloration.

So first off...hello! I hope to be able to share my experiences with everyone and I look forward to being a member here.

And now I do have a question which you have probably heard many times...how should I restore this razor? I've emailed a local in the hopes of getting it honed but how could I go about giving it a nice little shine and hopefully keeping whatever is left of the 'King Cutter' logo?

Thanks a lot!

Hola Jeremy and Welcome to SRP, congrats on your first step towards SR shaving on your purchase, as always recommended stop by the WIKI Straight Razor Place Wiki
and spend some time reading the excellent beginners info.There's also some info on restoration, but IMO (in my opinion) maybe post a picture here so the well seasoned can pass some advise to yah.

Thanks Deryan! I will definitely look at the WIKI and I just edited my post and added some pictures

I would not try to shave with that, even if you are able to get it back into working shape. It would make a really cool display item. But it's up to you.

That's going to be a lot of hard time consuming work getting that razor ready to shave with imho. Better to get something shave ready before you tackle a job like that.

talk to glen I have seen him do miracles with a lot worse. And even if you don't get it shave ready you can learn a lot working on this one rather than messing up a nicer razor the first time out

You might want to ask a mod to move this to the workshop if you don't get much feedback on how to tackle it.

I'm actually interested in their thoughts as well -- I've seen two great blades at antique stores in almost-identical condition. Unfortunately, I considered the condition to be bad on account of the uneven wear. You can see on both the edge and the spine that the toe end got much more attention when being honed.

If it's not that difficult to correct I might head back to those stores because one was a DD Wonderedge and the other was a Red Imp.

Hey guys!

Thanks for all the feedback! So regardless of whether or not i'll be able to shave with this razor, i've started restoring it. I've been sanding it down and buffing it and it's getting pretty close to a nice shine. All the rust is gone and most of the little nicks on the blade have disappeared.

Here are two pictures from day one:



I did a lot more work on it today and it looks 10x better than these pictures. I'll put them up tomorrow including some close-ups.
I'm really hoping that after i've sent it in to get honed and straighted up it'll be a good shaving razor but i'd be happy to just have it as a collectors item as I've just ordered a nicer looking W&B off eBay.

Please feel free to share more advice, it's really appreciated!!