New Idea??? Experimentation....

[Aurora Borealis]

I got a bottle of Turtle Wax Liquid Rubbing Compound and added a little over half of it to my untreated walnut media. Gave it a few hours of tumbling by itself, then used a spoon to stir through the now reddish walnut media to declump some that didn't mix completely. Ran it another few hours, tested again. Walnut media now "treated"...

Thanks for that tip Byron.

Gary

[ByronTodd]

Alright.

Yeah, I talked gssixgun into trying this, but hadn't really posted anything of note myself. But I showed some of my results in chat channel, and Glen (gssixgun) said he would hunt me down with one of his shoot at a 1000 yards and kill custom rifles if I didn't post my results here...

I like Glen, and I would hate to have his conscience bothering him for the short few minutes after he took that shot to take me... so I guess I'll post:

Here is one crappy representative of a *before* photo of a Case Red Imp. I was given this razor and it had a chip in it. I got the chip out, sharpened it, cleaned it up (skipping another good story here), cleaned it up some more and darn it! the dremel jerked and I rechipped the darn thing in almost the exact same spot as the chip that was previously in! Darn!



More crappy before pics can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/byrontodd/RedImp

So, I read some on restoration, I order a ton of wet sandpaper from Rockler.com, purchase more restoration stuff and get to hand wet-sanding... Three hours in, I'm wet-sanding with 220 still, reading the restore chat, and notice that I haven't made a freaking dent with the pits or any of the nastiness of the razor. I post that in channel and since Joe Chandler laughed at me, I figured I was either doing something really wrong or just new to it.... Turns out I was just new to it - as Joe knew... (He's a nice guy no matter what all his friends say!)

Five hours (and on another day) later with the 220 grit, I realize that I've de-pitted the thing! So I take the plunge with the 320 grit... I go at it for an hour, and get discouraged because I could still see the 220 grit sand lines...

Then this discussion came up.

After Glen (gssixgun) did all the initial work of finding out if this actually worked, I bought a tumbler, an extra media bowl, untreated walnut media, untreated corn cob media, and flizt liquid polish. I put the imp into the walnut media and let it go for 72 hours (checking it from time to time). I, like Philadelph, didn't see any results other than basic cleaning of the blade after that time. I asked Glen why it didn't work for me. Bottom line, untreated walnut media doesn't do much. I went to Wally World, bought a bottle of Turtle Wax Liquid Rubbing Compound, I poured over half into the walnut media. Four hours of tumbling later, I mixed the stuff up some more to break up the clumps and ran it another 6 hours.

That brings me to around 8AM Monday morning. I dropped the Red Imp into the now treated walnut media and let it go. I briefly checked Tuesday morning and Tuesday night with some noticeable differences, but not enough to talk about. However, tonight, I cut of the tumbler and pulled out the Red Imp.

Let me show some more bad pictures:








Ok, so they aren't that bad.... (and I mean from what they show, not in the photographic sense...)

[AlexJade]

So, I read some on restoration, I order a ton of wet sandpaper from Rockler.com, purchase more restoration stuff and get to hand wet-sanding... Three hours in, I'm wet-sanding with 220 still, reading the restore chat, and notice that I haven't made a freaking dent with the pits or any of the nastiness of the razor. I post that in channel and since Joe Chandler laughed at me, I figured I was either doing something really wrong or just new to it.... Turns out I was just new to it - as Joe knew... (He's a nice guy no matter what all his friends say!)

As someone new to wetsanding and restoration what advice was given that turned things around?

[Philadelph]

As someone new to wetsanding and restoration what advice was given that turned things around?

I believe BT was just stating that he didn't realize it can take hours and hours to sand out pits.

[kasperitis]

I gotta get to Wally-World to pick up some walnut and some of that polishing stuff! I got a perfect candidate blade, but I've only got corncob.

[ByronTodd]

I believe BT was just stating that he didn't realize it can take hours and hours to sand out pits.

Uh, yes.... Hours and hours and hours. That crazy carbon steel used by Case is torture on fingers. Joe laughed because he evidently has messed with some 132 Red Imps before and knew how hard the stuff is....

[vgod]

so with you guys running these things for days and days on end, any clue as to what your electricity bill is going to go up to? i really want one, but i cannot justify it if i in turn make my electric bill jump$100 a month.

vgod

[Lector]

I cant see it taking any more electricity than the small fridge i have in the bedroom for drinks. It's not a power tool that uses tons of amps. More of a rock tumbler.

[D2T]

Being an engineer, I like to @#%^ with stuff. In fact, I'm sure 99% of the people on this forum do or we'd have some other more boring hobby

I decided to take one for the team and buy some plastic media for my tumbler and see how it works out. The media I bought was Clean-Cut™ Fine Cut Pyramid media. It proudly claimed:

Fine-cut media leaves parts at three micro-inches with an extremely smooth, but non-reflective,finish

Now I have no idea what a three micro-inch finish means. I didn't even bother to look it up. It was the confidence with which the above statement was typed that drew me in! At $19/5lb it wasn't the cheapest media. When it arrived I had some concerns that either this media wouldn't last very long as it seemed pretty brittle. So I throw it in my tumbler along with a Rodgers and Sons I had lying around and....

....after two hours I checked and didn't see much of a difference. Ah well, I figured I'd give it more time. So my wife comes home and all she can say is

.... HOLY @#%^ THIS THING IS LOUD!

It seemed at least 10 times louder than walnut media. The tumbler was sitting in the kitchen up until this point. In the interest of saving my marriage there were two options: get it to the basement or find a way to quiet it down.

Being the lazy...errr, efficient person that I am I decided to alter my experiment instead of moving it's location. I added just enough water to the media to keep it quiet. This didn't take much.

Of course I had my concerns that water would rust/tarnish my blades but it's always fun to learn from your mistakes.

*** 9 hours later ***

I wake up, have my morning constitutional, let the dog out for his, and then go to check on my tumbler. My findings:

The good

- the water didn't destroy my tumbler. No adverse effects. If I filled it too much I'd have a problem.
- The engravings are still present on my razor, and the rest of it is extremely smooth

The bad

- Massive tarnish. The blade is almost black in appearance. I tried polishing a few spots and it comes off with a little work. Possibly a roll in the walnut/corncob'll work that out for me.

The ugly

- My photography skills. Here are some pictures documenting my experiment. I'll just point you to my photobucket folder since there are quite a few.

Overall I'd say the experiment was a success. The results were much faster than I'd had for walnut. Assuming the tarnish can come out in a walnut or corncob cycle I will continue to use this method.

[Philadelph]

Nice. Why not take the "hard" road and just leave the water out but move the tumbler? lol That might have a better result.