Thread: 1st attempt making a razor

Built forge (near enough), what a mess SWMBO went balistic. Suffice to say wore a respirator, not to sure what refactory dust does to lungs. Chamber has good coating of ITC100 not shown in picture.
Anyone have any thoughts where to put burner hole? should I be more on muffle or chamber with burner? Advice welcome.

coated pipe can be toxic at high temperatures...
Would recommend doing your HT without the pipe.

Just an observation about your little muffle oven. I sort of agree with Mike_ratliff about the pipe question. Perhaps a simple bit of uncoated steel pipe would be a better choice.

Secondly, although you probably thought of this already, I would use the muffle oven in a vertical position so that you can hang the razor blank to avoid contact with the heated pipe walls.

Thanks for concern fellas, I'm only to aware of dangers of coatings especially zinc. As it happens the pipe is plain old stainless no coating, it's a component from my place of work ( I work in automotive ).
It hadn't occurred to me to fire it verticaly, but what a cool idea, presumably I'd have to use a wire from a bar across the tube, please elaborate. One question I have is how to position the burner to give a more even teperatures, I'm thinking I should play the burner directly on to the side of the tube, maybe it dosn't make much difference.

I would have the flame come in tangentially so that the flame will swirl around the pipe. My concern would be if there is enough space between the pipe and the bricks. I am no forge expert I would try and see if it works.

Charlie

Regarding the wire used for hanging, it should certainly be thick enough in diameter so that there is no danger of it burning through during the heating cycle. Again, one will want to choose for an unplated wire. One might even consider using a length of Nichrome wire instead of regular iron or steel since it is more resistant to heat. Whatever your choice, it is also best to arrange the hanging so that the wire does not directly touch the blade blank except where it passes through the hole. This will (hopefully) prevent any odd heat masking or contact discolorations of the blade metal. More than this I cannot add.

Congrats!, The razor looks very good.

Just a couple of comments.....

Remember to "Normalize" the blade 2-3 times before the Heat Treat. Mike Blue said that will not only relieve stresses in the steel thus reducing the chance of the blade warping but also refine the grain size.

Forge.... I agree with Spazola, a tangential angle would get the flame to swirl around the muffle which will speed up the heating cycle. I also agree that you may not have enough space between the muffle and the wall of the forge but go ahead and try it as is first. Remember that a muffle is not necessary, just run the flame a bit rich so that it is not oxidizing the steel as much. I assume that you have extra thickness along the edge and extra width on the blade to compensate for carbon loss. If not then be sure to use the muffle with some bits of leather in it to burn off the oxygen (but you probably already know this).

Vertical forge and wire.... just use a 1/8" to 1/4" steel rod laid across the mouth of the forge. That should be more than adequate to hang the blade onto. What kind of wire to use I am not sure, maybe SS?

Spine work....may I suggest that you fully finish off both the spine and the tang before HT. They are a bear to do after HT.

Hope this helps,