Thread: Advice for a newbie

Interesting work,

Back to the ergonomics, those big screws with worked top and edges will be right in your way when honing, stropping and shaving. I do not like stropping large Sheffield’s with triple stacked bolsters for that reason.

You may want to scale some of your designs and figure out the ergonomics of daily use.

I like the spine and tang work on this last one, but still looks like a strop eater.

I recently consulted for a large company who had a well known knifemaker create a prototype razor, most of my critique was of the ergonomics, holding the razor for honing and stropping and little things that the designer probably never considered, but were glaring obvious to a user.

The blade came to me un-honed. I honed, stropped and shaved with it daily for a month. Put years of use on it in 30 days.

Thank you Euclid!
I'm going to stabilize some interesting spalted birch and burls I have for scales and was planning on recessing the holes to make them as flush with the scales as possible.

Last weekend I decided to make templates of my favorite old Sheffields and also drew up some templates of my own. I transferred them all to quarter inch scrap wood to serve as durable templates and to allow me to hold them to gauge the ergonomics of my own designs before progressing to steel.

I was able to work on razors today and profiled 5 more which were all different.

I've also been looking into finishing patinas and I'm interested in experimenting with parkerizing, ferric chloride, hot salt bluing and citric fruit patinas post HT.

Originally Posted by JOB15

I'm impressed
Keep at it.

Yeah me too

Old thread...

yep the new guy is hitting all the ancient threads , got to say hes enthusiatic