Thread: Design you own razor blank and build your own.

Before you start sanding use a sharpie to mark your center.
it's a good marker for when you're profiling your blade also... makes any waves easier to spot, and keeps you in the right area.

Originally Posted by Deckard

Thanks Mike,

How about keeping it central to spine?
I figured it's best to put blank on flat surface and use some sort of gap/slip gauge and ensure gap is same when blank is turned over, obviously this would be done before thinning the blade. I understand there are ways of centralising in the scales if it's not quite perfect.

Would you guys be willing to document these tricks with photos for everyone the next time you get to work on any blades... might help others.

Originally Posted by Mike_ratliff

Before you start sanding use a sharpie to mark your center.
it's a good marker for when you're profiling your blade also... makes any waves easier to spot, and keeps you in the right area.

Yeah, no problem.

I've just figure out how to attach photo's to thease threads.

I'll try to get better pictures as I do my next blade, butthat might be a week or so away

as for pictures, open a free Photobucket account
and upload there, then post the img link in your reply

Here's my way of thinning the tang central to spine inspired by Mike Ratclif's advice. If you look at the marked tang photos you will see how uneven the tang is. The center line marker was put on the following way.
1. Fix a marker pen to a flat surface as shown ensuring the nib is about central to the stock thickness, it dosn't have to be exact as you will see later. The reason for fixing the marker is to ensure that height dosn't vary as you can't assume the nib is concentric to pen case so needs to be kept in constant position.
2. Keeping razor blank flat on surface, move it around all the tang profile.
3. Flip over the blank and again repeat step 2. You should end up with two lines about the centre line.

By looking at my project you can see how unsymetrical my thinning is and more work is required on the sander to correct this. My lines look like one thick mark because they are close together and nib was thick, but I think this gives a good enough indication by eye to make adjustments.

Obviously it's best to do this before thinning the blade as you have a greater flat area as a datum, I've obviously made a mistake because I'm learning as I go but think I've got room to recover the situation.
I know it sounds obvious but also ensure that pin hole is put in before thinning the tang.

This is my first razor and I'm following Bob Allman's steps, and I'm sure there might be other maybe easier ways to do this, so please share if you know. I've steered clear of using engineering equipment to mark out etc as I'm determined to do this as basic as possible, but you can be as as sopisticated as you prefer.

Excuse photography, I'm not brilliant.

Deckard

Thats a great tip! Thanks

Thanks for the photos on the tang stuff Deckard...

hey guys, we are pretty much ready to roll. I need a few things though, for those of you who liked the smiling shape or the generic shape, send me a pm with your email address so that I can email you a scale photo of the designs...

Then I would ask you to cut out the design, copy it to cardboard, and give it a test grip to see where you'll put your pivot... and to make sure the feel is right for you.

This blank is perfect for MY grip, but I hold razors farther back than some... please make sure it works for you before we cut the steel.

Start getting excited

Dave

Deckard:
Make sure to drill your pivot before you thin any more, it's going to be hard to get the hole straight once your tang is ground thin...

Hi Mike,
It's probably not easy to see the pivot hole from the photos, but it is there, I drilled it before thinning blade and tang for the reasons you mention. It's 1/16" diameter, I plan to use brass rod.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the size of this hole, are there any hard and fast rules?

no... I've seen anything from 1/16 to 1/8, just depending on what the pivots will be made of... most vintage razors are 1/16 though IME (at least at the scales... some have kinda funky holes on the actual razor tang)