Thread: thinking of starting to make custom straight razors

Noobie here from Melbourne Australia. Been using straight razors for a few yrs now and wanted to get into making straight razors. Wanted to know if there will be a market for my custom razors. Is it worth spending the dollars on grinders etc to start my journey into the business of customs from down under.?

Welcome to the forum. As an outsider with no intention of buying a custom straight razor, I'd have to say there is no dearth of custom/semi custom makers at the moment. I think it is a case of there is always room for one more till there isn't sort of thing. If you decide to go for it the best of luck to you.

Bob

Thanks for the welcoming Bob. I guess it's a matter of deciding and just take it as it goes I guess.

Why not draw up some concepts and/or make a non funtional prototype, post some pictures and guage the feedback.

Hey john, welcome aboard.
I’ve made half a dozen razors (for my own amusement and to give me razors to practice my honing), and even if you have fair mechanical aptitude the learning curve can be step (and time consuming). I didn’t dive in at the deep-end, instead using the basic tools I already had to see if I liked grinding razors. You could end up spending lot of money to get enough equipment so that you could produce razors in an economically viable way.
There are already a couple of Australia custom makers. “Boxer Custom Razors” and “DC blades” come immediately to mind (the proprietors of which are on this forum) as does “DJ razors” for a more mass produced type product.
The weak Australian dollar makes exporting more lucrative, but it may be hard to find a style niche, or achieve the level of workmanship needed to compete with the established makers.
I would suggest making a couple of razors, using your own minimal tools or at one of the courses that some local bladesmiths run (Tharwa Valley Forge runs some occasionally) to see if it’s the thing for you before spending big.

Great advice Dr Dalton. I know of boxer but not dc blades. Will follow up on more searching. As for grinding and such I'm a big perfectionist and I know I can achieve to get out a quality piece. Time is really wat i dont have in hand Having 2 kids under 4. Getting feed back from u guys here really inspires me to move ahead and take on this journey.

Originally Posted by JohnAUS

Noobie here from Melbourne Australia. Been using straight razors for a few yrs now and wanted to get into making straight razors. Wanted to know if there will be a market for my custom razors. Is it worth spending the dollars on grinders etc to start my journey into the business of customs from down under.?

The simplest answer is if you make good product there will be interest. Making good functional straight razor will take time to learn, investment in quality tools, and also talent. This is not an overnight endeavor, and unless you are really good it is not going to be a moneymaker.

my pride and joy

You have posed a somewhat interesting question. It is a very complex process, one that not only requires a fair outlay in cash, but also there are other things that you will need. Probably the most important of those will be an experienced mentor, that is already a master of cutlery making. You will also need time to master the trade. In the end if you considered both your outlay of time to get to a place of marketable skill and the tools of the trade and a place to work them, in order to actually make money at it, I expect that you will need to make more than just razors. I live in an area where there is an abundance of carvers, caring in wood, precious metals and stone. If I were to go down that same path, I would expect that my bread and butter would be in carving tools, not razors, but my passion would be fine edge tools of all sorts. There are very large blade smith gatherings in Canada and the US, I expect similar things happen Down Under. Go check them out meet some people, perhaps find a mentor and begin to dabble, so you can better understand the paths to your journey.

Let me say that if profit is your motivation, then no. Don't bother. At the risk of sounding blunt: you don't know what you are getting into.

If you want to make razors commercially you need quite some equipment. You will need to do a lot of work before you become good enough to get decent prices. It's a money sink.

And then there is the cost of an accountant, miscellaneous costs and the fact that whatever you have left at the end of the year is subject to income tax.

Inventory is also quite expensive. Or it can be. I've been incorporated two years now. My net profit so far was a couple hundred annually. Taking my inventory into account, i am still several thousand in the hole.

The reason i got into this is that i wanted to take my hobby to a professional level and make it pay for itself while following my passion. And so far it is doing just that while enabling me to do things i could not do otherwise. Btw i had been dveloping skills and knowledge for almost a decade before making the jump.

I am all for following passion. But if you ask me if you can jump in without a lot of skill with the idea of making money of custom work if you don't even know if you can make blades or have the patience and dedication for investing years of your time... then no.

Passion leads to skill which may eventually lead to profit. Sometime in the far future. You can't skip to that last bit