The Making of a MINTY W&B Meatchopper.

[vladsch]

I finally got around to restoring the W&B Meatchopper that I got off e-bay a few months ago. I am pleased with the results but must say that I was hesitant to go through with it.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for a response about a contract position and if it comes in today then I will get to keep this razor otherwise this baby is going to go on e-bay .

I wound up doing hand sanding, again! The pitting was just too much and I was going through the sanding disks like chips. After about five 100 grit and five 150 grit disks without making much of a dent in the pitting decided that I was not going to make it with only 50 disks in stock.

Psyched myself up for hand sanding and bit the bullet.

Here is the result. The faces of the blade are brush finish with 400 grit paper and light sanding at 600. The rest is polished to a near mirror finish. The scales are cocobolo with brass pins, washers and wedge. Of course a custom box made from Morado to hold the beauty:



The tools I used are simple: a jeweller's vise and pin and a home made sanding stick.



After doing hand sanding with no help but my fingers, I decided to make something a little more comfortable. It is a scrap piece of purpleheart with a strip of leather glued to the tip. I cut two paper clips and screwed them on to hold the 1/2" strip of sandpaper in place. Later I added foam rubber cushion for the grip to reduce the wear and tear on the flesh.

The pin was modified to create a bottom surface parallel to the top so that I could use small clamps to hold the blade in place during sanding. Holding the blade still during sanding is especially critical when trying to create straight grind marks on the blade face. Holding the blade by hand while sanding results in wavy lines that don't resemble the original grind patterns.

Overall the sanding took 6 hours at 100 grit, and about an hour for each 150, 220 and 320. From 400 to 2000 it took another hour and a half, mostly because the blade faces are only lightly sanded to 600 grit and the rest of the blade does not take much time.

I took pictures along the way so that you can see intermediate results, which at first can look quite scary, but then as the grits go up so does the hope of getting a good result.

[vladsch]

The following images are after initial cleaning with the sanding disks, then after 1hr and 2hrs of hand sanding with 100 grit paper.



Here we have more 100 grit sanding, after: 3hrs and then after 1hr of 150 grit.



Now after an hour of 220 grit:



Next is after 320 and 400 grits. I got smart and started putting the grit size into the photo.

[vladsch]

Here is the pre-polish stage. The faces are sanded to 400 grit, by completely removing the 320 sanding lines and then lightly sanded to 600 grit so there is a mix of 400 and 600 grit lines.

The rest of the razor is sanded to 2000 grit and ready for polishing. The grit lines are so fine that they are only visible under certain angles. Some photos look polished but they are not.



As you can see it does not take much to get a razor from pitted to MINTY other than about 15hrs of restoration effort .

It is easier to do this over a few days. The sanding is very monotonous and there is a tendency to skip to the next grit. Which will accomplish nothing but wasting the sanding of the next two grits. You'll have to go back. So it will waste about an hour to two of your time.

This time around I always sanded perpendicular to the blade. When I was done with a grit I would run the sand paper once or twice horizontally to make scratch marks and then switch to the next grit. Sanding on the next grit until all horizontal scratch marks disappeared was the way I made sure I did just the right amount of sanding.

Trust me, once you start sanding there is no way you will be willing to spend extra time on any grit "just to make sure" so there is a need for a sure fire way to know what is enough.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and hope to see your MINTY restoration results soon.

[superfly]

You can comfortably sell this razor as NOS. It's that good... and even better. I have a blade just like this, but I think I'm gonna leave it like it is. There is no pitting, only blackened surface, and I kinda like that... Thanx for the tutorials, anyways, they will come handy when I'll want to restore a razor, and stop on time before starting

Nenad

[EdinLA44]

Vlad,

That's an amazingly beautiful razor. One question though. It looks like when you were sanding and polishing the blade that the stamped brand name and other inscriptions were polished off but then the photo of the finished one shows a mint imprint. Did you re-stamp it or do a stencil or something?

Ed

[vladsch]

Vlad,
That's an amazingly beautiful razor. One question though. It looks like when you were sanding and polishing the blade that the stamped brand name and other inscriptions were polished off but then the photo of the finished one shows a mint imprint. Did you re-stamp it or do a stencil or something?
Ed

Thanks superfly. It does look very good but I don't feel comfortable selling it as NOS even if it does look it. I will try MINTY instead and see how it works out. BTW, this blade did not look like it had much pitting until I got the tarnish off. The tarnish tends to hide the shadows and highlights that make pitting stand out. It also tends to fill in the pitting so it does not seem deep.

Ed, I did not mention the etching because I wanted to see if someone was paying attention .

Yes, the original etching was sanded off. Once the pitting was gone most of the orginal etching was either gone or almost gone and shiny with very rounded edges looking like it was crudely restored. This time around I was aiming for a much higher mark and wanted a really MINTY blade.

So I made myself etching templates with the original logos and manufacture mark and deep etched them into the blade. I must admit that it does make the blade look awesome. Crisp black logo. Makes it almost too minty, if there is such a thing.

[superfly]

So I made myself etching templates with the original logos and manufacture mark and deep etched them into the blade. I must admit that it does make the blade look awesome. Crips black logo. Makes it almost too minty, if there is such a thing.

No way! You are one disturbed guy. Man, that's crazy, and too much work. The etching does look minty and niiice. I didn't noticed it was gone at the first place.

oh, hope you get to keep this razor, too...

Nenad

[Ben]

I think you should keep it. That's a superb piece of work.

[garythepenman]

Hi Vlad, I would be really interested in bidding on this. What's your ebay name and when are you going to list it ?.

Cheers

Gary

[vladsch]

Hi Vlad, I would be really interested in bidding on this. What's your ebay name and when are you going to list it ?.

Cheers
Gary

Thanks Gary. My e-bay name is the same as here, vladsch. I will post a link to the e-bay auction in this thread once I list it. I am planning on doing it tonight. As usual it will be a $0.99 starting bid and a 3 day, no reserve auction.

Ben, I'd love to keep it but I need to get a paying job. Since I did not get that call today, I guess I have to keep pawning off my razors on e-bay just to keep afloat .

Oops, I should have made these as separate posts. I need that post count to hit 400 .