Restoration - Gold Dollar 66 for PIF N o. 20

[rbscebu]

Collecting straight razors is a bit like collection stamps, although more useful. Many will be aware of the exacting and detailed quality control that Ningbo Gold Dollar Razor & Scissors Manufacture Co., Ltd. put each and every razor through that they produce. With such stringent quality control, we would never expect one of their flag-ship razors, the 66 model, to be released with a fault. The last razor that I have available from the lot I received from @mark123abc0 is one such very rare razor.

This GD 66 was released into the market with a misaligned pivot pin hole in the scales and an out-of-position pivot pin hole in the blade's shank. Here is the razor as received.

Not realising the rarity of this find and thus its exceptionally high value, I decided to do a re-scale before PIFing it to a worthy P&C member. Upon removing the OEM scales, I was surprised to see the location of the pivot pin hole in the blade's shank so close to its underside.

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It was too late to turn back now so I pulled out some European maple timber I had in my stockpile and shaped up a new set of scales.

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Next I will treat the timber with cyanoacrylate before cold-forging a lead wedge and pinning it all together. Once all finished and honed to my standard of shave-ready, this razor will be PIFed under a new post on P&C.

 

[rbscebu]

The lead wedge was forged and the scales given four applications of cyanoacrylate. The razor was then all reassembled with brass pins and small silver nickel plain collars. The completed razor ended up looking quite good. It also now balances much better at about 15mm from the pivot pin towards the blade. With the OEM scales, the razor balanced at about the blade's shoulder. There is the faintest bit of figure showing in the timber.

I will post this PIF tomorrow, so stay tuned.

 

[rbscebu]

I am in the process of honing this razor from factory edge to shave-ready. I Shapie tested the bevels and was surprised that there was no compound bevel and the both bevels line up with the spine sides.

As there was no heavy grinding to be done, I started setting the bevel on the 1k whetstone. As it started to come together, I moved on to the 3k and fully set the bevel there.

From the 3k, I moved onto the 8k whetstone (my 400, 1k, 3k and 8k whetstones are all just cheap Chinese synthetics) to start refining the edge/bevel. From there it was on to the lapping films.

I started the lapping films on 5μm (not really needed as it is about the same as my 8k whetstone). From there is was 3μm and then 1μm films. At this stage the edge is passing the HHT but is still slightly catching on the hair before cleanly slicing through. This should be fixed after the last stage of a full diamond pasted balsa strop progression.

Once the balsa stropping is completed, I will put the razor away until tomorrow for its leather stropping and shave test.