Thread: Western Style Kamisori

Originally Posted by sharptonn

LazyH, you seem to be a thinker! Your blade here looks pretty likely in shape. Has it been hardened in any way?

Yeah, I used O1 tool steel for the blade and hardened and tempered in my little toaster oven (not the most accurate HT oven, I know, I but all I could find after the move). One thing I liked doing with knives but never thought to do with razors was marquenching, it made a really nice, durable blade and I wonder if it might work for a straight razor too. The bainite in the steel made the knives almost indestructably flexible and it seems just like what the thin edge of a straight could use.

Originally Posted by sharptonn

We will rib you, but respect you.

Go ahead, give me your best shot!!! I've learned so much from this forum from when I first picked up my great grandpa's old straight razor to making my first hacksaw blade kamisori (bad memories there, face looked like a tomato after ) and everything I've learned this past year before I joined was thanks to the amazing people here at SRP, funny, kind, sharing, and not afraid to say what needs to be said.

Well, finally got some free time (along with most of my tools recovered), so I thought for the sake of completeness I would show my first attempt at a more traditional style kamisori, just a first draft, left the point a little longer so I could start the plunge grind with a little wiggle room without messing up the whole blade.

You do nice work! Lovely hollowed crispness on the spines! A handle on a Kamisori is not unusual. Japanese put rubber handles on them and then may wrap them with string to get a better grip. And the removable blade Kamis come with full handles also from close to the blade back. Look at "Kamisori" on the 'bay and click Japanese in the straight razor area.
I shave with all of them and...the larger grip is more comfortable to steady the blade even though I hold it like a straight near the blade on the tang. The larger handle fills the rest of my fingers though I do not grip it with them..
YMMV
~Richard
I have seen American production razors in the past with a full grip blade and tang to end as they came from the factory, and they made microtomes with them..

It does look quite good! Get the final done and let's see some shaves!

Thank you, this one I made from 1084 rather than O1 like my other blade. I might trim the point a bit and give it some shape before shaving. I did have a question about heat treat for anyone who may be knowledgeable in that area, my heat treat came from lots of trial and error and research.

Correct me if I'm wrong in any regard but my HT came from the realization that the smaller the steel grain, the more readily it will dissolve into austenite and therefore the lower temperature you require. So the first thing I do is austenitize at about 200 over critical temp, then quench to martensite, this is to make sure that all carbides are dissolved and that the grain (and any proeutectoid carbides) are all even and uniform, even if a little over sized. The next step is a quench right at critical temp, since the grain was even out it the last step then the steel should all be able to dissolve evenly and I can create a finer grain than in the last step, and the quench sets me up for the next step. Now this part is what took me the longest to understand the reasoning behind, spheroidizing. Coming from fine grained martensite, if the steel is heated to sub critical, and held (in the case of 1084 at least) for a few hours at that temp then allowed to slowly cool, you can get the finest possible formation of spheroidite, or "spheres" of gathered carbides. This sounded like a horrible idea at first, but once you get that finest grained carbides, then austenitize and quench at the most controlled temps you have, that the spheroidite acts as nucleation points for future grains, creating the finest possible grain size AND keeping any carbides out of the grain boundaries which would otherwise weaken the steel.

If anyone has any opinion on this style of heat treat I'd love to hear any kind of opinion or criticism. The awesome people at hype free blades and metallurgical bladesmithing motivated that particular approach.