Thread: Steel Composition

I suppose an easier way to attack this that I should have thought of in the beginning is to ask our custom razor makers here at SRP.

Custom razor makers: what types of steel(s) do you tend to favor or lean towards(high carbon, low carbon, etc.)? What types of processing methods do you typically use? I'm not asking for the "secret ingredients" of your razor recipe. I do not need specifics (holding at x temperature for y minutes). Just the general practices.

Any info would be nice. Thanks to everyone who has posted here in attempts to help my young self.

Thanks.

Side note: I tend to frequently call myself old, especially around folks much older than I. I am only 21, but having had to work a lot growing up on a farm and weedeating and cut firewood for money in high school, my body feels much older than 21. However, the old-timers, (and I don't just mean old-timers where I live, because they grew up the same manner I did for a MUCH longer period of time, but even adults who live here in the city where I go to school), don't seem to feel that I am allowed to call myself old. The types of adults I mostly speak of are those who drove a delivery truck whilst in high school (no shame in that, needs to be done), but feel the need to tell me I don't know about hard work. That just gets kind of aggravating. If I am ever around you and call myself old, and you are much older than I, feel free to correct me. However, please don't cut me short on the few gray hairs I have earned and the hard, honorable work I put in during my younger years.

Originally Posted by broger

Side note: I tend to frequently call myself old, especially around folks much older than I. I am only 21, but having had to work a lot growing up on a farm and weedeating and cut firewood for money in high school, my body feels much older than 21. However, the old-timers, (and I don't just mean old-timers where I live, because they grew up the same manner I did for a MUCH longer period of time, but even adults who live here in the city where I go to school), don't seem to feel that I am allowed to call myself old. The types of adults I mostly speak of are those who drove a delivery truck whilst in high school (no shame in that, needs to be done), but feel the need to tell me I don't know about hard work. That just gets kind of aggravating. If I am ever around you and call myself old, and you are much older than I, feel free to correct me. However, please don't cut me short on the few gray hairs I have earned and the hard, honorable work I put in during my younger years.

That's not unusual, you know.

I stopped having school holidays when I was old enough to work - I used to have to help my father on a road gang, breaking out concrete, asphalt and tarmac, digging out roads and pathways, laying concrete and hot rolled asphalt and tarmac. Boy, I used to long for the holidays to end! Before that I had to practice digging drainage trenches and manholes. By the time I was 19 I was pulling up whole flagstone footpaths in town, by hand, digging out the lime putty bedding, the sand levelling layer and then another 4 inches before backfilling with leanmix concrete and tarmac. By 21 I was overseeing whole housing projects but still doing all the oversite work like digging drainage, connecting to the highway sewer, making the paths and roads, laying the kerbing, salt glaze pipework and manhole ring sections and going to night school twice a week.

And that was having it easy - some of my contemporaries had it much, much harder.

The older guys I worked with had it harder still. My own father had six part time jobs while still at school - when he left to work full time he was making less money then when he was at school. By your age he had already been bull-ganger on large building sites - anyone who couldn't keep up with him was sacked, before getting a loan for an excavator and lorry and starting a road gang with only him and his brother. When they built walls he didn't have a trowel - he had a cut-down shovel, even the mortar mixers had a hard time keeping up with him and two were working on him alone. They (dad and his brother) had families and worked all the hours they could, and my dad still went out selling from a suitcase when he got home and went to Petticoat Lane Market to pick up more supplies on a sunday.

When we worked together it was non-stop work, ony a 15 minute break in the morning and 30 minutes for lunch. We used to leave the house in the dark - in summer - and get home in the dark. I used to fall asleep eating sometimes. We didn't have luxuries like mini-diggers: we dug out by hand, and if the lorry was away unloading we carried on digging, throwing the spoil into a heap on the road and then shovelling it off the road onto the back of the lorry when it returned. All the kerbs, slabs, bricks, etc that we had to use were unloaded by hand. The sacks of cement were large then, not those silly little things we have now. My dad could put one on his head, one under each arm and then someone would lay one over his back.

One of the guys wanted a telegraph pole for firewood that we had cut down - my dad said OK, but he would have to get it home himself. He came to the job with two pushbikes and that night him and his mate cycled off with it on their shoulders like a great long articulated lorry. One guy was so strong he could lift blacksmiths anvils unaided and giant drums of fuel oil. He'd never known anything but work all his life.

When I ran my own gangs I used to work alongside them. When we were reinstating trenches for British Gas we had miles of trench, just over a yard wide by 4 inches deep. In the summer we hired a road planer to roar out the temporary topping and relaid with a basecoat of hot rolled asphalt followed by a thinner, finer top coat of HRA and we got through up to 45 tons a day with one person on the broom, two on rakes, one on squeegee, one on a tandem roller and two with wheelbarrows - the blistering hot material was raked out of the back of a 15 tonner by one guy (if we were lucky - if not you had to rake it out onto your own barrow) and run back to the trench. That's some going for all-hand labour and at that thinness of laying.

There's hard work, my friend, and then there is really hard work. I still knock around with old guys that did that sort of work and am happy to be called 'kid' and 'boy' by them, and I'm twice your age and then some (and then a lot, actually).

Regards,
Neil

I agree. I have always been older than I was. It sucks now that I am actually old!

Say! That is a pretty short list for you, Neil!

Originally Posted by sharptonn

I agree. I have always been older than I was. It sucks now that I am actually old!

Say! That is a pretty short list for you, Neil!

It surely is - it only goes up to 23 yrs old, though.

I've been working hard all my life, I even played hard when I was a kid .........

As to the steel custom makers use, I know that Robert Williams favors 01 but also uses others. Butch Harner has used 01 and for awhile was using that ball bearing steel, I forget the #. Mastro Livi has made ATS-34 among others, and lest I forget, I've got two of Robert's razors in S30-V. I might be wrong, but I think most of the makers, that aren't doing pattern welded steel, A.K.A. Damascus, are using 01. It is just real good to work with and makes a darn good straight razor.

Neil,

Sir, I do not doubt for one second you, or many of our fellow straight razor companions, have worked much, much harder than I. The work I have done in my time is not nearly the hardest work on the planet. I understand. I understand I am not the first nor the last to do what I have done.

I also understand that I have worked harder than many of the people who I know that are my age. Most of my fellow classmates were born with silver spoons. That's not their fault, and I am not judgmental. However, there is only so many things you can believe about someone when they complain of mowing their half acre yard. I have not moved mountains, but I am proud of my work ethic, the work I have done, and most importantly, learning while doing it. I don't deserve a DIY show, but I don't know many 21 year olds who can build fence, lay tile, put a 100 year old white oak down in the forest where you want it, grow a full garden and can food, and do it all correctly. I hope you'd agree with me on that, at least to some extent. I know many others who can do it better than I can, but in today's word, I think that is something that I know how. I have my father and all my jobs to thank for that.

I'm not trying to win a noble young adult award, and if I am coming off that way, I apologize. I am just proud of what I have done and always stand behind what I know I am capable of doing. I was 13 the summer I worked full time as a brick mason the laborer: the only laborer for a very quick moving mason. The term "come on boy, pack the mail" was used a lot . I don't deserve a ribbon or a dozen cookies for that, but I an very proud I was able to do it, and did it well.

I respect what you, my father, older uncles, and others who worked hard in their time have done. Please believe that I do. I would simply ask you not to take away from me the work that I have done, and the knowledge and lifestyle that accompany. I always enjoy cutting up with older folks, especially my old man, about being "wet behind the ears." Even my father, the hardest worker I have ever met (not just a biased opinion) can and does commend me on being able to differentiate myself from my generation on the subject of working hard.

I could converse with you all day on the subject matter and even have a few "One time at this job," stories myself. We could most likely have many laughs in a conversion. Of that I am sure. Also, thank you for your posts about steel on this thread.

This post was, by no means, arguing with you.

Thanks,

Brandon

I appreciate that, Brandon, I really do.

I just don't know what prompted you to bring the subject up in the first place, but seeing as you did I thought I would have a go at replying to it, that's all.

You were lucky with your father - mine hardly ever had anything good to say about me. I was a bit of a tearaway, though (lap it up Tom, I know you know!). Compliments? Maybe one or two, but grudging. Usually just a 'hmm, not bad - could have been better'. Not that I'm taking anything away from him, he was a hard man is all. His father was worse. I can remember him ridiculing my father in front of me when I was little. My dad is much nicer and complimentary now that he has been retired for some time. He reckons I 'finally knuckled down' I think - not bad, when my own retirement isnt that far away...

Anyhow, friends, right?!

Regards,
Neil

This is not the hardest work I ever did but hard enough. Started as a teenager and finished in middle age, thankfully. Hardest was working on shrimp boats out of Biloxi Miss when I was in my mid teens.

I originally brought it up because in my post to the Custom Razor makers of SRP, I mentioned calling myself young. It made me laugh and think of how I always joke with my parents about how old I feel like I'm getting.

The reason I feel my "hard work resume" is so short is because it stops at 17. After that, I started college and spent my summers doing engineering internships. Not something I believe I should feel shameful or sorry about. My parents have always told me to use a sharp mind to make my living, not a strong back. To save my back for my hobbies and my family. I suppose that is the source of my abrupt halt to "brow wiping work."

Of course friends, without a doubt.

Brandon

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

This is not the hardest work I ever did but hard enough. Started as a teenager and finished in middle age, thankfully. Hardest was working on shrimp boats out of Biloxi Miss when I was in my mid teens.

JImmy - do you remember that photo of you having your lunch sat on a girder high above the city - loved that photo!

Regards,
Neil