Thread: My first two homemade razors

I've been tinkering on these for like 6 months, but they are finally pretty much done. They are far from perfect, but I like how they look and I'm shaving with them full time now. I am pleased to report that it is deeply satisfying to shave with a razor you made yourself! Yeah!

Size is 25mm (8/8), total length of 150mm. Steel is O1.

Thanks to all the folks in the Forge section for helping me out tremendously, and for all their past posts which I mined for info on how to get started. Special thanks for Mike Blue, who did the heat treating on contract at great speed for a great price, and helped me do some debugging later.

I'm fairly new to wet shaving and straights (~6 months part time, 2 months full time), so I'm having the classic challenges of simultaneous co-optimization of shaving technique, honing technique, razor quality, stropping technique, etc. Still, while I have a long way to go, the longer I keep at it the better it is getting.



If you are interested, there is a forge thread regarding the making of these razors here:
http://straightrazorpalace.com/forge...eat-treat.html

And two posts on my blog with more details on the construction and problem solving:
Tooling Up: First homemade straight razors - out for heat treating
Tooling Up: First two razors finished and in Use

Another person with that dreaded motivation gene passing me up again at something I want to do "someday". lol.

Awesome work! I love them!

That's some excellent craftsmanship there. They look great! I like the trident image on the blade.

I'm new to SR shaving, stropping, and honing too, but I haven't thought about making my own blades.

Good job on the razors I like them a lot.

Charlie

I've watched your progress on these and they have come out great!
If you hadn't said so I would never have believed they were your first, great job

Very impressive, well done!

Impressive for sure you done well, im sure will see more from you, great job!

Well done. Two fine razors. They look really nice.

Stu

I can only imagine how awesome you felt when you finally got these done. Its always a great feeling when you have created something that will last forever. Just think, in 200 years someone could still be using one of these and posting it on a website like this saying " look what I scored today!" great job!!

Originally Posted by HARRYWALLY

I can only imagine how awesome you felt when you finally got these done. Its always a great feeling when you have created something that will last forever. Just think, in 200 years someone could still be using one of these and posting it on a website like this saying " look what I scored today!" great job!!

Thanks HARRYWALLY. It does feel awesome, and its nice to think these might be useful for a long, long time. I think a more likely scenario is that whomever is dealing with my stuff when I die will toss them in the dumpster! But even if that is the case they could be recycled easily or would degrade well in a landfill. They do have some technical issues so I don't know how much they would be valued by some future RAD afflicted personage, though if they made it to 200yrs that would make them interesting for age alone.