Thread: can this be a razor?

Yup, A1008 a structural steel. It's not a steel meant to take or hold an edge similar to a razor blade's performance. That does not mean you cannot shape a razor from it, but I would expect that you will have to hone it each time you mean to get a "good" shave with it. Call it a practice steel....

Originally Posted by oldblades

Found out more information. This is a micro grain, high strenght low alloy steel, HSLA.
I don't know all the details, but it is made to be stronger then high carbon steel but 25 to 30% lighter and higher corrosion resistance.
Since it was free I can not go wrong to try. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Thanks for all the input.
Tim

Yep go ahead for the hell of it, I would be interested to see this.
Another option, you could make a frameback and insert a suitable blade.

ok let me preface this by saying i'm a welder/fabricator so i do have some expertise in on the subject but i have no experience making razors and i am not a machinist or a metallurgical engineer so don't take my word as law.
The particular HSLA steel is not hardenable save for possibly with ice brine though even that i doubt would yield much success. Generally a 0.6%- 0.9% carbon range is where you find the steels that take best to hardening (stainless excluded that a whole different ball game). That said you still might be able to get a viable blade out of it the copper content suggests that you probably have some sort of AR material (with out ANSI number i couldn't tell you for sure) which precipitation-hardens like a nobodies business. So opting to cold work the final stages of your blade shaping could work. If you could get me the the alloy number i could tell you more.

cheers
-Omid

Thanks Omid, that prompted me to remember another option. A blacksmith by the name of Rob Gunter came up with a solution called SuperQuench some time ago. It's a mixture that will get the thinnest hard skin on a bar of mild steel. I don't have the recipe handy and I'm sure there are now a half dozen variations.

A good friend of mine who makes hatchets out of milder steel uses it. The hardened skin is thin enough that it will hone away much quicker than a better grade of steel. But it's something to use when you're in a pinch.

I'll see if I can get some more info the steel the next time I talk to him.
Thanks
Tim

Originally Posted by OmidFarahbakhsh

That said you still might be able to get a viable blade out of it the copper content suggests that you probably have some sort of AR material (with out ANSI number i couldn't tell you for sure) which precipitation-hardens like a nobodies business.

.

I work in automotive and have sat in on some very interesting conference calls with materials engineers about boron being a big problem when spot welding car skin panels (which happen to be low carbon), apparently it makes for very hard steel and the boron only needs to be present in trace amounts. I'm not a steel expert but I'm curious about the boron question and what other impurities may have a similar hardening effect.

The practical answer to a lot of these things is to go ahead and try, you can't know what's not possible until you do it. You can only try stuff, then you know what is possible.

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

= A blacksmith by the name of Rob Gunter came up with a solution called SuperQuench some time ago.

What is sounds like your describing is some sort of case hardening solution. I would be cautious about using any off the shelf product especial old product (it was common practice until not that long ago to use cyanide and ferrocyanide to speed the hardening process). A poor man's solution, one that i use to re-harden my own tools after sharpening is to heat what ever you're trying to harden with a fuel rich oxy-acetylene torch (until a magnet will no longer stick to the surface, this indicates that the steel has reached the correct temperature) and then quenching in used motor oil, repeat this step 5-6 times and you will have infused enough carbon into the outer layer of steel that it can then be hardened and tempered as normal. Special care must be taken to have to the blade as close to it's final shape as possible seeing as best case scenario you're going to get 1.5 mm thickness of the carbon enriched material. Hope this was helpful
Cheers
-Omid

For what it is worth, I notice that your piece of steel is eight (8) inches in length which is more than enough from which to fabricate a straight razor.

So, the obvious suggestion is to fiddle around with a small cutoff from one end of the bar. Try to sharpen it in as-is condition. Try some simple heat treating and quenching. See what sort of an edge it will take. Only then decide if you wish to commit your time and trouble to making a razor from this stock.

It is unlikley you will be happy with the results.... At all. You can make an artistic piece but you will have to go through special process to get any hardness at all. This is just too far away from any tool or high carbon steels to be of any real value.

High strength and hard are 2 very different concepts. Titainium is fairly soft but VERY tough and of great strength but won't hold an edge... even in a cold hardened state. There is a new Titainium alloy that will start to hold an edge but the extent of its hardness is 50Rc.

For razors what I am reading is 58Rc to 62Rc is what you want.
Do they require the same flexiblilty as some knives do?

Jeff

And. then there was the fellow at work that grabbed O-1 tool steel rod which some wag had placed into his rod case. Talk about hard!!! The weld broke, it was so brittle. That might be a solution to your use of the steel; make a welded edge into about ¼" up from where the edge will be with multiple passes. Some times a similar process is called hard coat welding and used to abrasion proof the surface of mechanical earth moving/digging tools.

And then, you may say to heck with it and buy a good 1095 blank~
Respectfully
~Richard