Good Deeds Never Go Unpunished - "Bengall" Restoration

[Doc Dan]

That Bengall Shortie looks great. One day I want to get a shortie.

 

[rbscebu]

@Garry357 won the PIF. Fortunately (for me) he chose the full-size Bengall. I now get to keep the wonderful shortie.

Tomorrow I will unpin the blade and clean it up in the pivot area. I will then shorten the scales at the pivot end by about 20mm and reassemble the SR, hopefully retaining the original collars.

I will post my progress in this thread.

 

[rbscebu]

This afternoon I decided to start on shortening the scales on this Bengall shortie.

First I very carefully drilled out the "head" of the pivot pin using a 1.6mm drill bit in a Dremel mounted in a Dremel drill press. I have designed and built a variable speed control so that the dremel can operate at well below its normal minimum 10,000rpm. The drilling was also done with a water/soluble oil emulsion for cooling and lubricating. The plastic scales can easily be melted when drilling out a pin. Once the head had been drilled out, it was fairly easy to tap the pivot pin out using a jeweller's hammer and an old 1.5mm drill bit as a pin punch.

I managed to save the pin collars for refitting. This Bengall is fitted with double collars on each side of the scales. The inner collars are slightly smaller than the outer collars. There are no washers between the blade's shank and the inner surface of the scales.

With the blade now free of the scales, I was pleasantly surprised that there was very little oxidation on the shank in the pivot pin area. Here it is after just a wipe clean with toilet paper.

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The pivot pin hole had a fair amount of gunk in it so I removed that with a toothpick and turps. To clean the shank and tail up, I started with 400 W&D followed by 600, 1k and 2k. This was finished off with an Autosol polish. I also further cleaned out the pivot pin hole with acetone and a toothpick wrapped in toilet paper. All looked good.

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I then filled the now clean pivot pin hole with epoxy weld and let it set. Once set and cleaned up, I drilled a new 1.6mm pivot pin hole in the epoxy as far from blade's point as possible. This mean that the blade's point will move away from the wedge as the epoxy wears.

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Tomorrow I might start working on shortening the scales and will report back in this thread.

 

[rbscebu]

I eventually got round to finishing the restoration of this shortie SR. Knowing I had to reduce the scales' length by 20mm, I marked where to cut the scales and got to work.

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I then used double-sided tape and stuck the pivot ends together. Using a 180 grit whetstone, the pivot end of the scales were shaped.

I normally like to leave about a 1mm ±0.5mm between the blade's point and the wedge. Measuring this, I was able to mark where I wanted the pivot pin to be located and drilled it using a Deremel mounted in its press and a Ø1.6mm drill bit.

The blade was then mounted temporarily in the scales to make sure all was correct. It was - just. The point/wedge gap was 0.5mm. I also noticed that where was a stamping on the inside of both scales that was going to interfere with the opening and closing of the blade. I had some M1.6 x 0.3 clear nylon washers so decided to fit those between the blade's shank and the scales.

It was then just a matter of pinning the blade into these shortened scales and polishing everything up.

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All looks good and I am looking forward to shaving with this little beauty tomorrow.

 

[rbscebu]

This Bengall shortie now has the following characteristics:

Manufacturer = T.R. Cadman & Sons Ltd, Sheffield, England​

Year of Manufacture = late 1920s to early 1940s​

Blade material = high carbon steel​

Blade width = 21mm (6/8)​

Point style = Dutch (round)​

Grind = full hollow​

Edge length = 51mm​

Bevel angle = 17.4°​

Stabilizers = one each side​

Jimps = top & bottom of shank​

Spine decoration = none​

Scales material = plastic​

Pins = two of nickel allow​

Length closed = 142mm​

Length open 180° = 212mm​

Mass = 43g​