shell Archives - WithoutInk

Restoring Two Wade and Butcher Straight Razors from the early 1800s

September 14, 2009 By Matt 2 Comments

This weekend I made the family go to flea market about 30m away from our home. My original intent was to find a old school vintage Barbers Hone. Something nice that I could use to keep up my straight razors. I was hoping for anything decent really. Panama, Swaty, Escher, Shatner, Dubl Duck, Shumate etc… sadly, I didn’t find a single one.

However…

I DID find some straight razors. Specifically, I found three from Sheffield England. Two Wade & Butcher straights and one Joseph Rodgers & Sons… I haggled with the guy and was able to get them for $10 a piece. I knew they were not in the best of shape but I figured what the heck, they might turn out nice as restores.

Flea Market Straight Razor Finds
Top: Joseph & Rodgers Middle: Wage & Butcher Spike Bottom: Wade & Butcher Barbers Notch

Here are some closeups of the razors…

Joseph Rodgers & Sons…

Wade & Butcher Spike…

Wade & Butcher Barbers Notch…

Restoring Two Wade and Butcher Straight Razors from the early 1800s

So, here is my first restore. Admittedly I have never done this before. Nor was I ever planning to do one.

They were pretty beat up but for $10 a pop I figured I could use them for something. In the car ride back home I was really growing fond of the two old W&B’s specially the barbers notch. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to clean them up. Im on a tight budget at the moment so I didn’t want to have to pay a lot to get them in nice working order. My thought was to de pin them and then clean the steel up as best I could.

So, I de pinned the two W&B’s and started to go to town with the limited supplies I had. I started whacking away at it with 100 grit. And I got the barbers notch to this point…

Wade & Butcher Barbers Point sanded w/100 grit

That took about a little less than an hour to do. Then sadly, I made a BIG STUPID mistake… I broke the tip off the Barbers Notch!

Which really pissed me off… I felt horrible. I mean that razor is probably at least 180 years old! So, this morning I decided to grind down the Barbers notch… I figured WTF? I already buggered it up… Here is what I was able to do with the damaged point.

Yesterday morning I went to the home depot and to the auto parts store and picked up some more sand paper… 120/150/220/320/400/600/1000/1500/2000

Now I must confess / warn you I didn’t take a whole lot of time. I think I spent a total of five hours. During that time I broke out the dremel and mandrel grinder. Went over most of the razors knocking out all the rust and as much pitting as I could. I also took off a lot of patina and such.

Then I proceeded with the grits. One thing I did was on each grit I used Flitz metal polish as a slurry – so to speak. I just added a few drops to the sand paper and went at it. I think this really helped cut faster.

So here is where I stand right now. I did the barbers notch all the way to 2k and the spike to 320 or 400 I dont honestly remember.

Considering this should have taken a week (to do properly) I am still pretty impressed with the outcome. I know I really should have spent more time on the different grits, but I really didnt want to make this a long drawn out ordeal – remember I wasn’t planning on even doing this. Nor have I ever done it before.

Next up, I am going to attempt to salvage the scales. One of the Wade & Butchers scales is cracked at the pivot pin. I will try and fix it though. It would be nice to have the original scales with the razors. The Joseph Rodgers & Sons scales might even be real tortoise shell. Im going to test them this week and see if they are real or not.

So, considering the rush job… how did I do? Any comments would be appreciated.

Matt

Matt is a Systems Development Director for a multinational franchise. Matt has lived and worked in Hawaii, Chicago, South Florida and currently resides outside of Atlanta. He enjoys his hobbies including Technology, Gadgets/EDC, Fountain Pens, Wetshaving, Clocks, Antiques & Coffee. He even roasts his own coffee weekly.

withoutink.com

Bashrc Example

April 30, 2009 By Matt 1 Comment

I was recently looking for some examples of a bashrc file. I figured I would post my current .bashrc file….

# ~/.bashrc: executed by bash for non-login shells.

##############
# Bash Prompts #
#############

# [12:34] ~/desktop $
export PS1=”\[[\A]\] \w $ ”

umask 022

#######################
# setting up file completion #
######################

if [ -f ~/.bash_completion ];
then
. ~/.bash_completion;
fi

############
# My Aliases #
############

#alias ll=’ls -lagh’

# see full listings with the ls cmd
alias ll=’ls -l’

# see full listings with the ls cmd (including hidden files)
alias la=’ls -a’

# move a file
alias move=’mv’

# copy a file
alias copy=’cp’

# rename a file
alias ren=’mv’

# delete a file (interactive mode)
alias del=’rm -i’

# clear the shell
alias cls=’clear’

# flush the dns cache
alias flushdns=’dscacheutil -flushcache’

# delete a file (interactive mode)
alias rm=’rm -i’

# drive space in MB instead of KB
alias df=’df -h’

# twitter (withoutink)
alias twwi=’/Users/Matt/twwi.sh$1′

alias l=’ls -lagh’
alias grep=’grep -n’
alias netconns=’netstat -a -f inet’
alias cd..=’cd ..’
alias ~=’cd ~’
alias dt=’cd ~/desktop’
alias ..=’cd ..’
alias …=’cd ../..’
alias ….=’cd ../../..’
alias …..=’cd ../../../..’
alias bye=’logout’

################
# history handling #
################

# Erase duplicates
export HISTCONTROL=erasedups

# resize history size
export HISTSIZE=5000

# append to bash_history if Terminal.app quits
shopt -s histappend

##################
# `ls’ to be colorized #
##################

export CLICOLOR=’true’
export LSCOLORS=”gxfxcxdxbxegedabagacad”

###########
# Mac Ports #
##########

# Setting PATH for MacPython 2.5
# The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH=”/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:${PATH}”
export PATH

##
# Your previous /Users/Matt/.bash_profile file was backed up as /Users/Matt/.bash_profile.macports-saved_2009-04-21_at_19:52:45
##

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2009-04-21_at_19:52:45: adding an appropriate PATH variable for use with MacPorts.
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
# Finished adapting your PATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2009-04-21_at_19:52:45: adding an appropriate MANPATH variable for use with MacPorts.
export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/man:$MANPATH
# Finished adapting your MANPATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.

Matt

withoutink.com

Basic SSH and UNIX Commands

April 7, 2009 By Matt Leave a Comment

Navigation Commands

ls this is the list command, it will list the content of the current directory
ls -alh this lists all files and folders + permissions and sizes in a readable format
cd this is the change directory command used in conjunection with a folder name like this: cd users/foo/ this would take to to the foo directory
cd .. this cd command will bring you back one directory in the path
cd ~ this cd command will take you to your home or top directory
mv this is the move command mv foo/ /path/to/new/loc

File Commands

touch will create a file touch example.txt
pico will open a file in a basic text editor pico example.txt
vi another basic txt editor vi example.txt
more will allow you to view the file without the ability of editing more example.txt
mkdir will create a directory mkdir foo creates a folder called foo
mkdir foo\otherfoo\morefoo this will make the directory foo with two sub directories
rm will delete a file rm example.txt
rm -rf will delete a folder and all subfolders beneath it rm -rf foo/
df gives physical disk usage report with % used
du lists all files and folder sizes – this takes awhile
du -sh this lists all the subfolders + sizes in a directory
wget archive a website wget -m http://whateverurl
ls -l | grep ^d lists all the sub directories
alias lsd=”ls -l | grep ^d” this creates the alias lsd of ls -l | grep ^d so you can use it more efficiently. You may have to sudo this.

Tar / Compression Commands

tar -cvzf file.tar.gz inputfile1 inputfile2

– this will combine two files together
tar -cvzf foo.tar.gz /path/to/folder/2/compress/ – this creates a tar.gz of a dir
tar tvf foo.tar – List all files in foo.tar.

Matt

withoutink.com

UNIX Command for Unpacking a Tar file to Different Directory

April 7, 2009 By Matt 1 Comment

1. Open Terminal
2. Type this command:
tar -xvzf /path/to/tar/file.tar.gz -C /path/to/dir/you/want/files/expanded

the -C in essence changes the file path for the unpacked files.

Matt

withoutink.com

how to sync files and folders outside of dropbox

February 17, 2009 By Matt Leave a Comment

i use dropbox on all my macs [and on my xp boot camp partitions] its very slick and easy to use. its saved my hide on many occasions. the biggest downfall so to speak is that dropbox only syncs files that reside in it’s folder.

here is how to overcome that obstacle…

In Windows:

Use either the JUNCTION utility from Sysinternals, or the MKLINK command built in to Windows Vista and Server 2008, for example:

junction “C:Documents and SettingsUserMy DocumentsMy DropboxDesiredFolder” “C:PathToDesiredFolder”

mklink /D “C:UsersSteveDocumentsDropboxDesiredFolder” “C:PathToDesiredFolder”

Or, if you prefer a GUI, install Link Shell Extension.

In OSX & LINUX:
Use the ln command, for example:

ln -s /path/to/desired-folder ~/Dropbox/desired-folder

This works with files to:

ln -s /path/to/desired-file ~/Dropbox/desired-file

Another easy way to do this with Terminal is type the ln -s part, then from Finder drag the folder/file that you want into the Terminal window then drag the Dropbox folder. hit return.

Note that an Alias file or folder does not work.

Matt

withoutink.com