Thread: ~16th Century replica

Wow that is a big razor. Very cool, great video.

Originally Posted by Geezer

I did a look up on Wikipedia, and found that the style is called Navaja. It is a word from the Latin Novacula ( Razor) The Navaja has a ratchet built into the pivot area to hold it in the open position. That could solve the problem for the mark 3's.
Navaja - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also I now know why the best USA natural hones were called Novaculite!
Respectfully
~Richard

That's some interesting information. It would explain the notch on some of the woodcut blades tangs.

That thing is beautiful and manly at the same time. With the size of that beast, one or two passes and your done shaving!

That is one sweet, chopper. Keep up the good work. I'd be a bit scared to hold something like that up to my neck. Mostly that I'd drop it and cleave off a toe...

This is a fascinating project, and one that demands our respect. Someone had to do it! So please don't take this as criticism... But are we sure that shaving razors were the same as the ones used for surgery? Most of the illustrations in those drawings show instruments I don't want any barber using on me, and I think the gentleman's pained expression at having his head shaved would be most explicable, if that is a large gash or even split cranium we can see.

It occurs to me that the high-peaked spine would be most useful in creating a deep wound. While I don't know the actual shape of medieval shaving instruments, I believe there is good reason to assume they were consistent, and they weren't elaborate. The medieval philosopher Occam (or Ockam) is said to have based the principle now known as Occam's Razor on the fact that it had remained unchanged for a long time, because any way you could complicate it, you would make it do its job worse. It took five hundred more years for small-radius hollow-grinding to paper-thin steel to come along.

Occam's razor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What we know about straight razors clarifies the role of the barbers as the first surgeons. If you had to be operated on or bled, you did not want a comrade bringing out whatever he carried for casual social work.

Originally Posted by ignatz

Muirtach;

I am led to ask just why you have chosen to give the form of your razor a completely straight cutting edge. ...

- Ignatz

Just to create even more puzzles in your head Ignatz...did you know that a Japanese sword begins it's life as a straight blade?

Given enough meat on the razor, the edge will likely come out of the quench with a slight curve. They might not need to be manufactured with a curve.

Originally Posted by Caledonian

This is a fascinating project, and one that demands our respect. Someone had to do it! So please don't take this as criticism... But are we sure that shaving razors were the same as the ones used for surgery? Most of the illustrations in those drawings show instruments I don't want any barber using on me, and I think the gentleman's pained expression at having his head shaved would be most explicable, if that is a large gash or even split cranium we can see.

Using Occam's Razor one could also argue that it would be more simple to use the same blade for all the different tasks. There are numerous historical razors still in existence from many periods. From roman bronze pieces to chipped stone blades to late Renaissance and modern era stuff. There are many different shapes and styles, even up to today, all to serve the same purpose. Additionally, in the late middle ages/early renaissance there are very few existing artifacts of any type that are not intricately decorated. Even simple bone combs are covered in religious imagery carvings. Simply owning something like a razor would have been a sign of wealth and the extra elaborations figured right into that. Even production level work would have had that stuff as it all had to be done by hand the only way for apprentices to get the experience needed for extremely complicated work is to do basic stuff on the lesser objects.

Barber-chirurgeons were also highly trained people with near magical knowledge at the time. Their tools were far from casual social work, but highly specialized tools for specific jobs. The first image with the gaping head wound, for example, is from the Feldbuch der Wundartzney. A book specifically dealing with the treatment of battlefield injuries. That image illustrates one of the early passages that discusses how important it is to clear everything from the area you are working on before starting to work. They are shaving the area around the wound so that they can work without hair getting into the way or leading to infections (though infection was not yet understood it was known that certain methods had better results). A practice still followed today.

I meant that if someone needed a wound attended to, a barber was very likely the only person around that you could count on to have a really sharp and clean blade. I think their training and expertise probably varied as much as those of any kind of unregulated therapist of today, from very good indeed to the sort you don't want trimming your dog's dew-claws. I've seen it claimed on the French Coupechoux.com : le coupe chou, le rasoir qui coupe le poil en 4 site that the great Ambroise Paré started out as a barber-surgeon, and I have my doubts about that. But Olivier le Daim undoubtedly did. Mind you, he was hanged immediately after the death of his patron, Louis XI, just in case he maybe deserved it for something. But I think that had more to do with his being a political dirty tricks man for an exceptionally manipulative monarch. Ironically some reports suggest that he may have hastened the king's end by having him drink from an antimony cup.

I have a copy of "Gunshot Injuries" by Col. La Garde of the US army, a wound surgeon from the Indian Wars to the First World War. He claims that wounds of the scalp area are particularly liable to infection, so the barber surgeons unquestionably knew some things. I've seen statistics taken from court records, which indicate that large medieval cities saw many times the level of armed violence even our worst areas do today. Barber-surgeons certainly got a lot of practice on edged-weapon wounds, and I'm sure developed a high level of expertise. Medieval life was probably well adapted to keeping the autoimmune system in trim against infections which would have us dropping like ninepins. They could have no more than a pragmatic awareness of the bacterial theory of disease, but then, Florence Nightingale didn't believe in it either.

But their knowledge was uneven at best. One of the reasons firearms were seen as a loathsome weapon, was that everybody knew gunshot wounds had to be irrigated with boiling oil. But Paré ran out, and had to use an ointment of egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine. In the morning he found those patients doing very well, while those treated before the oil gave out were writhing in agony as wounded men were meant to do. He learned the lesson, but I think plenty of others didn't.

Japanese swords are generally forged with something of a bend, which is increased by the hardening process. That may owe something to the fact that the rear of the blade is thickly coated in clay to retard the quenching, while the edge area (although not normally thinned to an edge at that stage) is thinly covered or not at all. I haven't made enough plain carbon knife blades without a parallel section to be sure, but I think they tend to do the same thing when hardened entirely uncovered. Oil hardening of 01 steel, though, tends to distort in in the opposite direction.