Thread: Custom Design - thoughts please

Originally Posted by Substance

I think you will need to draw a cone as mentioned
The smile only needs to be a few millimetres of curve not to extreme to be effective
Drawing it is easy, you should try grinding a 3" long curved hollow smile on a 2" wide flat belt lol
A note on Honing a smiling blade, the blade edge and spine is not flat on the hones the whole time, this is why you need to do a rolling X stroke to get the full edge length right

Ok, so a smiling razor doesn't have a flat bevel. That makes sense....

Originally Posted by edhewitt

I agree with the idea of a smiling blade, i did some research on this myself about a year or 2 ago and found that about 1/8" deep is a good amount of smile without causing headaches for honing etc.
It also looks like there is going to be a fair gap between the toe of the blade and the wedge when closed, it could just be an optical illusion though and it is purely aesthetic anyway.
I am not sure if hammer finished tang and spine filework might look a bit busy, alternatively they may juxtapose nicely.
If i were going to notch the scales at the wedge end i would probably notch the wedge as well. I realise that the idea is to show off the brass though.

If you scroll back to the top of the thread you will see in the background of the image some sketches where I tossed around the idea of the notched wedge. In the end, I decided to expose the wedge. Might be a pain to keep polished though.

Thanks for all your feedback everyone.

Originally Posted by Sxot

No I haven't. I just maintain my razors and send them out for honing.

OK, it can be hard to visualize something with no experience with it and a bit of a handicap in designing a straight razor.

Regardless of that you are doing well with your evolving designs by incorporating suggestions as you go.

Bob