Hybrid wootz and damascus razor

[Bruno]

This is a project that has been quite a while in the making. It's been in the planning stage since last year and it finally came together.

The body of this razor is a piece of damascus that I made at Charlie's place. I started a 5 layer billet, which became 13 layers, which was cut and split in 2 stacks. One stack was twisted clockwise, the other counter clockwise. Those 2 pieces were drawn out, cleaned up and forged together. Finally, that billet was twisted clockwise again and drawn out. A piece of wootz was drawn out from a bar, and forge welded underneath the damascus body.

One thing that did not turn out as expected was that during the creation of the billet, I had inserted thin strips of metal that I thought were nickel, but instead were 15N20 or something very similar to 15N20. Since I already had 15N20 in the billet, those thin strips don't show up anymore since they are stacked against thicker strips of the same(ish) steel. Still, the pattern action going on in the damascus is the same

That was the most fun part of the project. After the forging, it was simply a matter of grinding the razor from that blank. The scales are Juma Ivory snake. I just had a test shave, and shaved like a dream, thankfully