Thread: Good hardness level and Alabama Damacus Steel

Hey everyone,

I have three questions.

1.) What is a good hardness range in RHC for a razor? More specifically what limits do we look for?

2.) This kind of goes with question 1. How does hardness levels of 57-59 perform?

3.) And the reason I have the previous two questions, has anyone ever tried "Alabama Damascus Steel"? Anyone who has tried it, how well does it perform?
web address is Alabama Damascus Steel

the reason is they both have razor blanks and billets and thus I was curious.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...zor-knife.html

By typing in Alabama Damascus in the SRP search you can find more threads

The blanks have the wrong geometry, I have received several question about the billets and making a razor but haven't seen one or honed one yet..

How wide is the spine ? Pics look kinda wrong.
I'm always a bit suspicious of razors made my knifesmiths but I may be unjustified.

Ahh you beat me Quixdraw.

Don't.

It looks too thin, and it is ground to a wedge, so honing is going to be a bear, but that is not going to matter anyway because you'll notice they have etched it whole, including the edge. This means that the edge steel itself is corroded, and honing the damaged steel away until you hit solid steel again is going to be a bear.

They're cheap, but as was already indicated: be wary of knife people making razors

Damascus razors are usually etched with a strip of nail polish or lacquer protecting the edge, so that it remains blank instead of being eaten by the acid.

I have a blank I got from them. Been sitting here a loooong time. It is too thin. I was going to hammer it down to a thicker spine
(stress it) when I did get around to playing with it. It's a billet not a blank so I have enough to do that. I am saving for a nice heat treat oven so it may be awhile before I play with it. It is knife steel sooooo ?

Ok everyone. Thanks for all the info. I really appreciate it. I still do have a lot to learn. So how about the first two questions though. I have been really interested in learning what makes a good razor. Plus with glen mentioning geometry, I realized I really know nothing about what makes good geometry and when searching I have found few answers rather than the words "it needs good geometry" or "the geometry is wrong". So what does make for good geometry?

Look around in the workshop threads. Your mind can explode there :<0) Your questions will be answered and you'll come up with 50 more.

Hardness is subjective. It appears to me that most of the folks honing blades seem to like around 59 or a little higher. But again, I repeat, it's a subjective thing. Some like to be able to hone without honing away the stone. Too low and the blade won't retain an edge. I've tested good geometries that were around Rc 50. I have no way to show how long they retained their edge.

Depending on the construction of the laminates, be careful if there is pure nickel included. Some of their billets have nickel in them. Nickel will not harden and if it crosses the edge in a layer could give you trouble when honing that section of the blade. This would be a great subject for microphotography as practiced here, but I've not gotten around to it.

If their material hardens to an acceptable point upwards of 57...there is no reason to believe with the correct geometry that it won't shave hair.