Cleaning

Soak overnight in water and some liquid dish soap to loosen the crud.

Clean with an old toothbrush and toothpaste, that is usually all that is needed. Be careful with gold plated Gillette razors, some have very thin plating and will come off easily.
 
This stuff's great.
It's fairly gentle as metal polishes go, and really brings back the shine.
I use a toothbrush on the knurling and hard to reach areas, and a microfibre cloth on the smooth parts of the razor.
Buff with another cloth once done.
Just go easy & light, as mentioned above.

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Having spruced up several hundred vintage razors, my routine is simply to squeeze a load of Peek polish (see @zygalski post above), work it in as best I can with my fingers, cotton wool bud and then an old toothbrush. Without wiping the polish off, I then use a squeeze of liquid hand soap (washing up liquid doesn't seem to work as well, but it's good enough in a push), brush all that together in one glorious mess and then keep brushing while rinsing the lot off under a hot tap.

My result is always a gleaming razor. Granted, there will be some patina left on many razors, but they will be clean and polished.

Anything that needs more attention will get a localised scrubbing with Elsterglanz, which is an abrasive metal polish which needs working to break the particles down, which in turn polish out the larger scratches left from when they were larger. It's an involved process, so not one to do on every razor.
 
Does anyone use ultrasonic bath to clean razors?
I do.

For many years, I've been playing and restoring melodeons, and I bought a 2 litre heated, timed stainless steel workshop-grade ultrasonic cleaner for cleaning steel and zinc reeds and reed plates. It can be used with a variety of cleaning additives for different metals, although washing-up liquid does as well as many.

In time, of course, I started to use it for other things, so it gets a turn at razors, the old girl's jewellery, spectacles, glassware, vintage and modern fountain pens, cycle parts, odd tools etc.

It will shift all "dirt" on razors, but, for most of them, especially 3-piece, it's just as quick and easy to use the soap/toothbrush method, followed by Peek or similar. Where a bath comes into its own is cleaning butterfly razors, and particularly adjustables, as it will operate on the dirt inside the razor and its internal mechanisms. Previously I'd soaked these in various solutions and for different periods, but the bath does the job more efficiently and quicker.

Perfectly good baths for domestic use can be bought for less than £30. That may not make economic sense if you only want to use it for razors, but, as I've tried to show, they can find a multiplicity of uses in the home.
 
Ultrasonic cleaners are not a magic bullet.
I clean vintage razors with elbow grease, an old soft toothbrush, pipe cleaners, Toothpaste/Denture-Tablets/Peek/Autosol etc...
Where the ultrasonic cleaner shines is at the end when it easily removes the residue of the cleaning agents from the knurls in the handle and from nooks and crannies.
 
Ultrasonic cleaners are not a magic bullet.
I clean vintage razors with elbow grease, an old soft toothbrush, pipe cleaners, Toothpaste/Denture-Tablets/Peek/Autosol etc...
Where the ultrasonic cleaner shines is at the end when it easily removes the residue of the cleaning agents from the knurls in the handle and from nooks and crannies.
My thoughts exactly!
 
Followed what @pjgh recommended as a cleaning routine. Odds and ends of hand soaps, a toothbrush (not mine), a few hot soaks, some polish and elbow grease and voila.......

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The charity shop Rolls has come up lovely and shiny. A little emery on the strop and stone plus a touch of Araldite. Very happy. It is about as clean as I can get it while maintaining what it is.

Just waiting for the blade to be returned from honing

Thanks all the hints from this thread
 
There are some good tips above, but I'd echo the warning about being careful with gold plated Gillettes. Even an overnight soak in warm water and mild washing up can bring the gold off on some models, where it was seemingly applied as a thin wash. On such razors I'd start with a very short soak in warm soapy water and a cautious polish with a sponge.
 
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