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8/8 San Mai prototype with gems
The design for this razor was something I was going to do in wootz, but I wanted to give it a try first in some other steel in order to get a feel for what the end result would be like. I decided to use san mai Damascus, with sides of Howard Clark Damascus. I twisted the tail a couple of times during forging to get a different look. The idea was to get something that looks a bit Victorian. In the tail I inlaid a natural green diopside gem on each side. I drilled though the tail at that place in order to make it possible for light to shine through. This way the gems would be much brighter than if I just did the inlay in holes.
The scales are what I had left of the juma ivory snake. Originally I though to use something similar in orange, but I felt that would clash with the green from the gems.
Doing the gems was the biggest challenge in this razor. There are a couple of things that need attention. The hole that goes all the way through is a certain width, and the outside is half a mm wider than the gem. Getting the depths right is a bit tricky. You want the gems to sink it without tipping over, and you want them to be deep enough that they won't catch, yet not so deep that they will touch each other. To glue them I used a special kind of glue that hardens only under UV light. This way I gave myself the time to set them correctly without worrying about the glue setting too quickly.
I think the result has a certain something.
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