Thread: What we have here is a pain in the

Originally Posted by mackie

Actually porousity is not caused by rust or pitting. When the metal is heated and poured into bars or sheets, sometimes they get the metal too hot and it is like when oatmeal is cooking. little bubbles come to the surface and then pop and leave craters. I used to be a jeweler and I saw this a lot in gold soldering joints. If the person were not experienced, they would heat the solder for too long and get it too hot and that would happen. In a casting it is sometimes microscopic. I do not know that much about it but if there are any blacksmiths here perhaps they could explain it better.

Although this could be true, I am about 99.9% sure this was not the case on this razor, and the "voids" are caused by corrosion...

You might ask why???

Because the first pic shows me that the razor was honed and used in the past, in fact the razor was honed to an edge before it left the factory... Now over the years if this razor was no good, as in poor steel it would have most likely never made it to being used as much as the first pic shows it was...
The .01% doubt is from the possibility that all the honing wear came from the very first time, and they never got an edge on there, and never threw the razor away all this time...

This of course is JMHO from what I can see over the Internet, through pics, and if the razor were in my hand I might see it different...

Just a thought...

Now that I have seen a pic and I can see that it has been honed all the way into the shoulder, pitch it, if there is that much bad steel its not worth further effort. It also looks like it may have been a victim of cell rot.

I had a razor recently that went the same way as yours...just like yours, the edge was back into the shoulder, in fact, it went ALL the way.

I even went so far as to grind down the heel, so it wouldn't be an issue on the hones, but it still didn't help.

Nothing I did, and believe me I tried everything I could, would make it get an edge. Like yours, the bevel LOOKED good, but the TNT wouldn't work. I finally just pitched it.

No sense letting one bad piece of steel mess you up inside.