Every little sliver of info is an immense help mate, thank you very much.

The PDF is downloaded and saved, it's gonna take a while to read that little lot.

I've seen the hollow grinding tutorial in the Wiki, thanks, great stuff! And I'll be sure to look out for some hollow grinding DVDs.

I think I've pretty much come to the conclusion that having waterjet cut blanks bought in and send out for tempering is going to be the way to go. But having said that I'm still going to try to learn everything I can about it all as well, if things go well I could move into doing all that myself in the future, you never know right?

You're a star mate, cheers.
Rob.

Quote Originally Posted by randydance062449 View Post
Bladeforums.com is a very good resource. You need to read the pdf by Verhoven ( spelling?) that will give you a good dose of the basics in metal.
There are dvd's available on hollow grinding. In the Wiki there is now a brief tutorial on hollow grinding.
Some guys use a waterjet service to cut the razor blanks out of the steel, then grind the razor blank, send it out for heat treating and tempering, then finish grind the blade. Del1r1um just posted a thread on this.
Your primary tool will be a grinder, check out KMG and Bador grinders and also usaknifemakers.com if you want to build your own grinder.
This is a start.
here is the Verhoeven info

Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others
who Heat Treat and Forge Steel
John D. Verhoeven
Emeritus Professor
Iowa State University

Here is a link to download the pdf
[URL="http://www.feine-klingen.de/PDFs/verhoeven.pdf"[/URL]


Hope this helps, enjoy the journey,