Thread: Honing a ????????able Damascus Razor

Here is the outcome...

All honing was done using 1 layer of 3M #700 electrical tape. I spent 1 hour trying on the razor..
1k Norton literally was tearing the metal away, looked like a hacksaw blade under magnification, the feel was wrong, the sound was wrong, so I stopped.
Moved it to the 4k and worked a bit with some slurry to even up the edge some using a more gentle approach, again the metal was very soft and worked fast, but I was getting a polish to the edge..
Moved to the 8k and started with a light slurry and diluted out to clear water, still quite a bit of metal swarf on the hone..
I could still pop arm hair but no where near normal, move to the CrOx strop and, bam,,, edge polished right up, looked like a normal razor now and the arm hair popped better, so I stropped it and lathered up...
Shave:
Technically it shaved, there was hair removed, I did one WTG pass and gave up, looking at the edge reveled the problem, there was significant edge damage from just 1/2 a shave... The metal is just not where it needs to be...
If you were to keep a CrOx charge strop handy and do about 10 laps after maybe 2 shaving strokes you could probably shave with the razor...

All kidding aside this is what drives people away from our hobby if this were my first razor my thought would be "Those guys are full of Crap, this sux"
Honestly my face is a bit raw...

You should be able to see the polish of the edge in these pics compared to the first ones from the honing..

Question about the metal...

Is there a way that this "Damascus" pattern can be etched onto plain metal?????? because that is what is looks like to me...

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Question about the metal...

Is there a way that this "Damascus" pattern can be etched onto plain metal?????? because that is what is looks like to me...

I can't find exactly how to do it but on bladeforums there are plenty of threads discussing the ability to etch a regular steel blade so that it looks like damascus. Or it could just be "real" damascus steel from a Pakistani factory that they did their normal stellar bit of heat treating and used extra high quality pot metal this time.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Question about the metal...

Is there a way that this "Damascus" pattern can be etched onto plain metal?????? because that is what is looks like to me...

Doesn't Dovo do exactly this on one of its models?

Has been done for a very long time,this is faux damascus.

OK then !!! this is from my normal simple TP and WD-40 wipe down before return shipping.. I have never seen this before on any other razor... I stopped at this too, and just re-packed it for the return trip...

Was the metal breaking down just from the WD40??

very interested to see how this goes as i have a local knifemaker offering "damascus" blades which to my untrained eye are very attractive supposedly rockwell 62 but not inexpensive either .. i am very skeptical ???

thanks for posting this project Glen
Mike

I didn't have high hopes for this razor. Especially after seeing that square point at the heel.

Originally Posted by Mastershake

Was the metal breaking down just from the WD40??

That was likely the residue left over from the ferric chloride etch of the damascus. Some smiths leave some on the blade to increase the contrast after polishing, and usually seal the surface of the blade with beeswax. The WD-40 acted like a solvent and dissolved the wax so the residue came off on the TP.