I've introduced myself to the SRP population yesterday with a post over in the introduction forum... today I'd like to share with you a story of my first attempt at making razor scales out of horn. I've never made razor scales before, and I've certainly never worked any kind of horn before.
To make matters more interesting (and because I live in a small apt) I decided to go with "non-powered tools only" approach.
I started off by scanning the blade that I was building for. I also scanned the original scales to get a feel of how the two fit together. Then I used a vector graphics program to draw a design for the scales that I liked and printed it out.
Secured the template that I cut out from paper to the scales using plain thin tape, then drilled two of the three pin holes with a hand drill. Then I used a thick sharpie to draw an outline of the template onto the horn. Removed the paper, and proceeded to go to town with a coping saw.
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After making the rough cuts I switched over to very coarse sand paper. I didn't use it mounted to any surface, but held in hand - I was trying to get really "soft" flowing feel to the scales. This is the part that took a better part of two days: sanding, eyeballing, sanding more, etc... I essentially abandoned the use of my template by this point.
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Making the wedge was not interesting, even though I do have previous experience working metal. Drilling metal (even thin one) with a hand drill is difficult. I also had no idea how to make such a small piece of metal wedge shaped, so my wedge is more like a spacer really - it's flat and not trapezoidal in shape.
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I put all of the stuff together and started pinning - getting 2 of 3 pins in place and I left the last one for the next day.
On that final day, I pinned the last pin. Since I was protecting the blade (well, my fingers more likely) while I was working on it with a layer of thick tape, I dulled the edge a bit and it wouldn't shave arm hair any more.
I made a few passes on my Norton 1k stone, no pressure at all, but one layer of tape on the spine. It's back to shaving arm hair. Really short "pyramid" on the 4k and 8k stones, still with the tape, then a bunch of passes on Fe2O3 and Cr2O3, stropping and then a shave which was amazing.
It feels good to have put something together with my own two hands.
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Lessons that I've learned in no particular order:
- horn stinks terribly when you work it, and even the tiniest amount of horn dust will stink up a place
- you don't need as much two-sided tape to secure blanks as you think you do, also use the masking tape first as suggested, otherwise getting the halves unstuck is gonna be very difficult
- sand it some more before going to a higher grit paper, this isn't a race
- peining isn't hard, but you are most likely leaving too much rod on when you start peining, so it's gonna crack and blossom and look poopy
