The old models of these razors (I don't know the date cutoff - maybe before the war??) have nickel-plated heads just as the new ones do, but silver-plated handles - and over the silver plate, they put a coat of lacquer to help stop it from tarnishing.
On many of them, the lacquer has gotten all ratty and might as well be removed - on those examples, the silver is tarnished anyway, so the lacquer isn't doing any good. On those, some ordinary silver polish (the rub-on type, not the chemical dip) worked fine for me. The last bits of the lacquer flaked off, and the silver polished up nicely as expected.
But on the nicest old examples, the lacquer is still pretty good. On the knurled grip area, it can look a little bit like white paint. Be careful not to remove or damage the lacquer on your razor, unless you mean to! This means no boiling, no rub-on silver polish, and no other abrasives or scraping. I don't know what the chemical dip type of silver polish would do to lacquer, and I'm not going to be the one to find out.
Handle repair, Merkur/Hoffritz/Pomco/Coles slants
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- Assistant Dean SMFU
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Handle repair, Merkur/Hoffritz/Pomco/Coles slants
Last edited by notthesharpest on Fri Jun 04, 2010 8:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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- Assistant Dean SMFU
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- KAV
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The golden rule for any vintage object is NOT to initiate any cleaning or refinishing until consulting people in the know. Anyone who has watched the Antique Roadshow knows this. Or, as I explained to a kid with a NEWLY sanded and shiny musket; that funny brown stuff is called browning. You just destroyed most of the value in your Brown Bess musket from the revolution.
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- Assistant Dean SMFU
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Maybe I'll have to change my post yet again.
If I had any collector-grade razors, or was even interested in collecting, I would keep to an extreme hands-off approach. All I had was good shavers with ugly handles, which I decided to shine up a bit - and wanted to warn others away from inadvertent damage. All the damage I did was completely advertent.
I once had a vaguely collector-type razor. I sold it, because I couldn't keep that great razor around and not shave with it, yet I also didn't want to scratch it up. The money was worth more to me than the shaves, in that situation.
If I had any collector-grade razors, or was even interested in collecting, I would keep to an extreme hands-off approach. All I had was good shavers with ugly handles, which I decided to shine up a bit - and wanted to warn others away from inadvertent damage. All the damage I did was completely advertent.
I once had a vaguely collector-type razor. I sold it, because I couldn't keep that great razor around and not shave with it, yet I also didn't want to scratch it up. The money was worth more to me than the shaves, in that situation.