Thread: Thoughts on using a hot stamp?

Cold stamp sounds the best for you buddy ! The only thing you have to worry about then is work hardening. Your material should come annealed or your not paying enough for it. And it sounds like your going with "removal method" for making your razors so you should be good.

Originally Posted by 10Pups

Cold stamp sounds the best for you buddy ! The only thing you have to worry about then is work hardening. Your material should come annealed or your not paying enough for it. And it sounds like your going with "removal method" for making your razors so you should be good.

Yup! Gonna try and get the blanks cut on a water jet tomorrow or Monday, it just depends on how much data massage I’ve got to do to get my vector art into the machine.

Anyone who’s done this have any thoughts on how close to the final shape my blanks should be?

My current thinking is: everything but the blade edge cut on the waterjet to the exact blade shape. That way there’s some room to grind off the carburized edge after heat-treat.

(My thinking here is based entirely on what I’ve seen Charlie do in his videos).

The outline is the easy part and you can leave long whatever you choose so that you can make decisions as you go. Your still going to have to do some shaping and grinding after the cut and not to mention your hollow. Point is are you set on 8/8 or are you leaving yourself room to do a couple 16/8s LOL. You get my point though. I would also talk to your heat treat guy before you do your first hollow. The thing is that thin means chance of warp or worst yet cracking. Can hardly wait to see what you come up with.

Originally Posted by 10Pups

The outline is the easy part and you can leave long whatever you choose so that you can make decisions as you go. Your still going to have to do some shaping and grinding after the cut and not to mention your hollow. Point is are you set on 8/8 or are you leaving yourself room to do a couple 16/8s LOL. You get my point though. I would also talk to your heat treat guy before you do your first hollow. The thing is that thin means chance of warp or worst yet cracking. Can hardly wait to see what you come up with.

I'm starting with a moderate 7/8 razor.

The steel is already in hand -- I bought this to start with.

Took the basic use class in using the water jet and tomorrow I'll go in and cut out six blanks, then use the lathe to make some washer punches. I'd intended to get some work done on punches and maybe cutting the blanks tonight, but instead went and watched the CNC machine to see how viable that would be for making razors -- clearly, depending on the CNC machine in question the answer is 'very', but the one available to me here will probably work, but there's a steep learning curve and I'm gonna start doing things easy. Basically, it looks like I could CNC everything that happens before heat treat, which still leaves some grinding on the other side.

Speaking of heat treat -- I need to find someone to do that, which will be another thread just as soon as I've got blanks to grind.

Oh yeah, also gonna use the waterjet to build a frame for a 2x72 contact wheel grinder (though I'm seriously thinking of using 1 inch wheels for maximum Sheffield-i-tude).

Most of the time, I have incredibly good luck.

When it turns, however...

The waterjet at the makerspace I've been using (I cut & ground a test piece) has broken down. It's an old beastie; a Flow Mach 3, whose control software sits atop a computer running Windows XP.

So tomorrow I'm going to try a nearby shop that will cut at the same price ($3/minute of cut time -- I should be looking at about $30 for six blanks from my 1084 plate).

I have a variety of backup plans that range from different cutting tech to just learning 4 axis CNC cutting and automating this process to the maximum extent possible.

At the nearest term though, I've cut a single blank from whatever 1/4" thick steel scrap was laying around in the shop and used my drill press and a drum sander to shape it into a pretty RSO. I'm about %85 certain I'm going to be able to actually make razors.

A further clue about what I'm planning: The first 5-10 types of razors I make will be replicas of razors illustrated in Smith's Key.



(There's another custom maker doing a Magnum Bonum, so I won't be replicating that -- but all the other designs are on the drafting table, and where possible, I'll be basing them on razors in my collection)

I’m highly interested

I’m blowing on dice, good luck with your luck !