Thread: Lake Superior, Sand Smelted, Michi-gane Razor

Tim, thanks for sharing the process and the resulting razor. Absolutely stunning.

Oh wow. That is seriously cool stuff.

Very cool. I grew up very close to Lake Superior (less than 3.5 miles away as the crow flies) and spent many hours fishing on it with my Dad and swimming in it. It's in my bones. I love it. Thanks for sharing such a great razor from a master.

Chris L

Iron is iron the world over. Might be interesting to see what the spectrograph shows for minor alloying elements though.

What was your yield (bloom out/ore in)? How about slag production? Got any spark pictures of the billet against the wheel?

I'm just full of questions...

So much pride resinates from this razor, makes me feel proud just looking at the images. Great job.

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

Iron is iron the world over. Might be interesting to see what the spectrograph shows for minor alloying elements though.

What was your yield (bloom out/ore in)? How about slag production? Got any spark pictures of the billet against the wheel?

I'm just full of questions...

Mike, No spectrograph, but lots of micrographs. The hardened steel is martensite with excess cementite. our best guess is about 0.90% C.

We didn't filter the sand. So there was lots of silica sand mixed in. The sand was about 15% magnatite and 13% hematite, and the rest was mostly silica sand. 45 pounds of sand gave a solid 5 1/2 pound bloom that was very high carbon. With all that silica sand, we mad lots of very runny, magnetic slag. Just for fun, I'm going to try a slag smelt later this winter.

I didn't take any spark pictures. the bloom and finished bar had plenty of carbon. There was no excess ferrite in the hardened steel.

I'm doing a smelt next week... so many things to try. I'm playing with sorting the sand as well. But it is fun to take it right off the beach and run it through the smelter.

Tim Z.

That is just incredible. Thanks for posting. Your razor was definitely built from "the ground, up". (sorry, a little cheesy !!)

Beautiful Job Tim, Thank you for telling about this Michigan Magic!

As others have commented already, very cool indeed. Talk about grassroots-sustainable-artisanal razor making
Very inspiring to be sure.

Now this has me investigating the geological characteristics of my home town, Las Vegas. There's iron in them hills!