Thread: 15/16 O1 curvy razor in ebony and coticule scales.

Yes, that's right: coticule.

I forged this from O1 with the intention of making a razor with a big smile, no shoulders, and no visible boundaries between the different parts. I suggested ebony scales, which was ok with the buyer. But then he said 'you know what would be really cool? the symbol for Pi inlayed in coticule'... Yeah sure. Why not? After all, it's not like that would present any difficulties whatsoever . However, it was a very interesting idea so I agreed for the fun of it.

I made the scales, gave them a mild CA coating to prevent splitting, glued on a template, and then painstakingly cut out the shape of the symbol with a thin chisel and an exacto knife. I put in a drop of CA, and then pressed in ground coticule dust. After letting it set for a while, I used the knife to very carefully scrape away the excess dust. Then a layer of hairspray to lightly fixate the dust, and more scraping. Then a couple of layers of CA, sanding, more layers, more sanding, and then many many many more times the same.

Doing the inlay work was more time consuming than forging and grinding combined. And that is not counting the multiple test inlays which I finished on scrap ebony before trying it for real on the thin scales. And during the actual inlay, I had to undo and redo some things a couple of times because it was not behaving quite like the test runs.

It was quite a huge time sink, but I am happy with how it turned out.

The spacer is bone. I thought about using coticule as well, but in solid stone it would almost certainly crack. And I don't have the equipment to make recon stone using epoxy and coticule dust.