Thread: Making of: Straight razor

Hello,

i would like to show you my way of straight razor making in a little making of.
It is not a WIP as the razor is long finished.
If you have any questions feel free to ask.

This is part one: the Blade making. Part two: The scale making, is going to follow soon.


I start with cutting the outline of the design out of a steel bar (1.2510). I also forge but this time i started this way.




Next step is grinding the outline of the Design to final shape on the belt grinder, stamping my Logo and drilling the pin hole:





Next is rough grinding. I stop at this point. After hardening i grind it water cooled to final thickness.



The ribbing is also done before hardening:



As is the filework:





Hardening: I use an electric oven with digital temp. control and quench in heated oil in a fryer. The oil has a temp. of 190°C. This is a way to prevent the blade from warping during the hardening process. But it does only work with alloyed steels, not with pure carbon steels, those would not harden. The Blade is then tempered twice for 1 hour at 170-200°C

The hardened blade ground to final shape. The rest is cosmetic:



Cosmetic done ;-) The Blade was handsanded to grit 800 and then polished on the beltgrinder with a special polishing belt.



End of part one.

Cheers,
Ulrik

Nice work.
What type of file is that in the 4th picture.

Thank you.
Thats a ribbing/fluting file. Its a special file type only used to create such parallel cuts. The tooths of the file have a rectangular shape an are aligned in parallel rows.

cheers,
Ulrik

I must say - that is great work Ulrik. Im pretty envious that you have the skills and equipment to do that. You mention that the above blade is an alloy - have you worked with carbon very much and if so, how is the tempering different?

The above blade is made of 1.2510 (1%C 1,1%Mn 0,6%Cr 0,6%W 0,1%V) so its a low alloyed steel. The tempering of such steel ist not different from the one of pure carbon steels. All carbon steels and low alloy steels need to be tempered in the range from 150-200°C
Only high alloyed steels have to be tempered at other temperature ranges. But those steels are no good for razors.
What differs between carbon and low alloyed steels is the hardening temperature. Due to the lack of carbides, carbon steels have a fast grain growth at higher temperatures. So they must be hardened at lower temperatures (770-800°C) to prevent coarse grain.
Low alloyed steels (that are good for razor making) have carbides that need to be solved at higher temperatures. The hardening temp. goes from 810-870°C depending on the exact alloy.

cheers,
Ulrik

Cool to see the progress, thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by Ulrik

Thank you.
Thats a ribbing/fluting file. Its a special file type only used to create such parallel cuts. The tooths of the file have a rectangular shape an are aligned in parallel rows.

cheers,
Ulrik

In English and in knifemaking they call it a "checkering file".

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

In English and in knifemaking they call it a "checkering file".

Thanks, I had trouble finding one on google.

Looks very simple, but think its not for me. thanks for sharing.

Beautiful!