Thread: A weekend at Bob Allman's (heavy in pics)

Good day all,

Had a trip down to Houston for some lesson's from Bob. Took a lot of photos as we went for notes and memory aids. Bob said to go ahead and post them up here. Bear with me I'm not the best photographer and there are a lot of photos. There are two sets. One is Bob as he is working. Demonstrating each step for me. The second set is my two after each step.

Here's where we were are working on the design. Laying it out on the graph paper with a standard size of 6 x 1. Worked out 3 designs with Bob's help. Chose the first and third one.



Some of Bob's examples and sketches -



Chopping the bar stock off -



We use spray adhesive to attach the designs to the steel. Bob than uses an etcher to transfer the design to the steel. Nice idea that I plan to use in the future -



Using the same cutter we removed a lot of bulk material -



Refining the profile with a coarse belt on the grinder's platen -



Mine of after above -

Further refining the profile with a small wheel -



Mine profile and ready for shaping -



Rounding the edges with the slack belt area -



Tapering the tang, Reducing it on both sides -



Shaping the tang. Rounding it out for it final shape -



Mine tapered and shaped. Notice I already made a mistake of not taking off the scale from the blade area. Cost me a bit of work later -



Bob putting on his mark and serializing the blades. Mine will will be marked later since I use electro chemical etching -

Here is my contribution to the lessons. Some filework, in this case twisted rope. Uses a chainsaw and modified marking file. Here is the first steps -



The filework after shaping and sanding -



Here's my 2 ready for hogging. Hogging is a knife maker's term for large amounts of metal removal on the blade -



Here Bob sets up the grinder for the 8" wheel for the first grind -



Here is the grinding setup ready. Area shows the area we are going to aim for removing with this first grind -




The knives marked to show how much metal will be removed for heat treat -



And the grinding begins -

Here is the test to make sure the wheel is lined up and square to the jig -



Let the sparks begin -



A quick touch to 80 grit checks to make sure the grind is even -



Cleaned up and ready for heat treat -



Hardening setup. Mini-forge and quenching pot heated to 150F -



Getting the blade up to non-magnetic for quenching. Notice the tang is outside so it doesn't get hardened -



And the quench -

Here the blades are getting ready for the first temper. Bob uses a deep fryer for it. Gets a 2 hour hot oil bath -



After the first temper it gets a dry ice bath overnight. This gives 1-1.5 additional points of hardness without risking chipping along the edge -



The next morning after the blades come back to room temp and go back into the deep fryer for another hour -



Here we start back into the grinding the blade. Starting here with a 8" wheel to further refine the hollow grind. Thinning the edge to about .020 -



Here is what it looks like after thinning -



Got to look for the 6" setup but until than it was the next wheel. This on is where we start raising the hollow grind. It is ground to about the same mark as the 8" -





More to come...

WOW! Great info.

SOOO!! Which blade is mine?

What a great little tour!

Verrrrrry interestingggggg!!!! A+++ Who was that guy who said that on Laugh In and he also rode the tricycle ?? Nice job folks!!

Thanks very much for sharing that process. Very educational, not to mention
what are bound to be beautiful razors.

Wow, what great post!

Bob is one smart guy, great teacher, great razor maker, and a super nice guy.

Thanks to the two of you.

Charlie