Thread: 9/8 San Mai nickel Shims Toxic Green G10

I've never done a thread like this before but ill go ahead and do a full work progress, this is the start of the billet and i was able to get 2 blades from this billet,it was a bit thick and it started with being .470 and wasnt flat... took it down to where it was flat on the platen which took forever, you could smell the steel for days afterward lmao and about everything had steel dust on it... i got it down to .310

Now i shaped the razor and this is actually the first time i designed a razor and continued to shape it until it felt amazing in the hand... before i was always afraid to make more changes because when i would deviate from the concept i would end up trashing the blade, here is the basic shape.




Ive never ground a a blade without a straight spine, i was doing my best to make it work but i just kept grinding places i wasn't meaning too, so i really wasn't happy with how the blade was turning out... also i ended up deciding to grind one blade with a shoulder and the other shoulder less...


i just stuck with it and just kept grinding slow and checking what was going on every time and ended up with this, i also ended up grinding it kinda like ir was going to be the final grind so i could practice as much as possible.. i couldn't help it but i also did a test etch wow i was really getting excited at this point, the grinds were exactly what i was looking for AND the test etch made them look amazing!



I heat treated the blades just like i do 1095 since that was the core, i actually ended up getting the blades that were with it Rockwell tested, turns out the batch of the 52100 and 1095 turned out to be 61-62 Rockwell, i couldn't test the san mai blades but i assume they would be close to that.

Next i set up for the final grind, which it was definitely noticeable when i was grinding feeling the difference in the hardness of the steel (maybe it was in my head) none the less i made sure to keep checking my work and kept it going little by little.

Final ground complete and time for the etch! which for the life of me couldn't get it to be the same shade of black on the high carbon steal, i was trying everything and just couldn't get anything close to what i liked. i tried mixing my ferric more, i was wet sanding with the ferric, i got 0000 steel wool and still... ended up getting the results i wanted by drying the piece with a rag and using that as a sort of abrasive. i also couldnt figure out if the all grey finish was better than the core two tones being split by the nickel



scales were cake, really the only problem i had was adjusting to a razor thats waaay thicker than im used to lol... the wedge is about .250, pretty happy with the scales because they fit perfectly to the razor