Thread: New creation by Josh and Gary

Huge thanks and respect to Josh and Gary who restored and made custom scales respectively. I'm thoroughly impressed and incredibly happy with the final product.

Josh restored an American Barber 6/8 (see original FS thread). I was particularly interested since I hadn't tried a spike point before and, well, it sure looked purdy shiny, hyuck! Great job Josh!

I got Josh to send half way around the world to Gary for one of his custom perspex jobs. Gary was incredibly helpful and sent pictures of the blade sans scales sat alongside the various shades of perspex he had available. A couple of weeks later I got a pm saying it was done and, what a bonus, with great silver star pins which complemented the small patterned etching on the tang.

So here are pictures of the finished product. Many thanks to Josh and Gary. Apologies for poor lighting, I'm no photographer and was using my wife's Nikon D80 without a clue of what you do. Just set it to auto and clicked. But hey... the quality of craftsmanship shines through, right?

P.S. Whilst taking these pictures a very interesting thing happened. I lined up my other 4 straights in rotation to take a group photo of the herd (well, more like a brood with 4 of them). I was trying to decide which order they should lay next to each other to best show them off. So I started moving them around, swapping positions, and then... *click*... this American Barber and the Wapienica snapped together, like magnets. Eh?!?! So I picked up the AB and touched the spine to each of the others' spine. They all acted like magnets. Well whaddaya know? So I then removed the AB and tried the others individually... this time no magnetism at all, with any of them.

So the American Barber is highly magnetised! I read a thread somewhere else that some razors were advertised as such, with (marketing-based) claims that it improved the shave. So here we are... this is one of those I guess!

Sounds like it's got a fair bit of residual martensite - Austenite is non-magnetic. I wonder what that blade would do given a good solid cryo bath.

edit: Oh, and pretty razor too! Congratulations on your new baby!

OK, that was about a mile over my head! I'm half expecting Xman to return from his tour of Europe and tell me it has Kryptonite!

I can feel a Wikipedia session coming on...

Originally Posted by mparker762

Sounds like it's got a fair bit of residual martensite - Austenite is non-magnetic. I wonder what that blade would do given a good solid cryo bath.

edit: Oh, and pretty razor too! Congratulations on your new baby!

It's more likely that a magnetic jig was used when restoring the blade, which magnetizes it. Looks nice, though.

But it wouldn't have magnetized unless there was significant amounts of martensite, right?

I appreciate the credit on this one, but it's not mine to take... The blade is one I got from none other than Joe Chandler. I bought if from him last fall, used it for a while, rehoned it and passed it along. It was a nice little blade. Gary's scales look great on it.

Josh

The magnitism thing is pretty cool--be careful rinsing this one under the tap.

Josh

Originally Posted by mparker762

But it wouldn't have magnetized unless there was significant amounts of martensite, right?

Pure iron is magnetic, with no martensite. Compass needles were made from it for hundreds of years. I don't think a steel has to be martensitic to be magnetic (although it usually is...austenitic steels are typically non-magnetic, and not hardenable by heat treating)

It was once believed that a magnetic blade wouldn't go dull as quickly - or storing blades with magnets would keep the edge sharp. There were lots of "magnetic blades" of vintage design with some making a point to market and sell their razors marked as such.

Originally Posted by JoshEarl

I appreciate the credit on this one, but it's not mine to take... The blade is one I got from none other than Joe Chandler. I bought if from him last fall, used it for a while, rehoned it and passed it along. It was a nice little blade. Gary's scales look great on it.

Josh

Well, what a pedigree it's turning out to have... Joe, Josh, Gary!

I remember a website from some time back where you could track a dollar bill as it changed hands around the world. Imagine if we did the same with straights.