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

It is wonderful to see an art revived to a high art. It's great to see that processes like this are not going to be lost and the end result looks perfect.
Congratulations

Now thats what I call made from scratch! Very nice work!

Originally Posted by Tim Zowada

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.

Cool cool, thanks for that. It's all about the fun.

Mike

Tim,

I grew up in Michigan, a bit lower than you though.

If you ever put any of the Michi-gan up for sale or trade please let me know. I would love to do a knife or two from it.

Jim

Amazing Tim, well done!

Is there any advantage of doing this? Is the steel any better than what can be bought commercially or is it just the fun in making it?

Thanks.

Lynn

Being a Michigan native and having grown up around the TC area and surrounding lakes....you make us proud ! GO MICHIGAN !!

Originally Posted by Lynn

Is there any advantage of doing this? Is the steel any better than what can be bought commercially or is it just the fun in making it?

Thanks.

Lynn

Lynn, As you know, "better" is a very subjective term. The real value in a blade like this is more intrinsic in nature. It is similar to using meteorite in a Damascus blade. You can say, "See those silver lines? They fell from the sky!". Here, the "touchy/feely" thought is the blade was merely sand on a beach just a few months ago. Then, the effort was taken to use a 3,000 year old process and make something of it. It is the same process as was used by the Japanese sword makers, using local sand, by one smith, in the USA, blah, blah, blah,... I think you get it.

Does it shave well? Yes. Does it shave as well as modern steel? Yes. Is the care and honing/stropping different than modern steel? Yes. Is it magic, and makes whiskers fall off your face by merely gazing at it? Nope.

The best analogy I can think of is; using this razor gives a feeling that is similar to catching a trout on a fly you tied, while using a bamboo fly rod you built, and even harvested, dried, planed, and laminated the cane. Complete satisfaction.

Tim Z.

Tim,

Are you going to try any other of Michigan's or other state beach sand or is the mineral make up of it not as great as the Lake Superior sand?

Also with the cost of smelting and refining the material does it end up being more of a niche type of process ( to cost prohibitive ) to do a lot compared to purchasing material?

See I was yearning for a meteorite steel razor cause I heard the shave is .... out of this world .... and now there is this. What I want now is some meteorite thrown into the cooker and sand from the Hull Rust open pit mine in Hibbing, Minnesota.