Hey guys,
I thought I'd bring up a question about pushing the bar, or perhaps the direction of razor creation.

Process flow:
I was over on Billysblades.com checking out some razors, and I really liked his custom file work on the spines of the razors. Especially what looked like the vines... I decided to check out the knives there too. Bill had a friend of his do some engraving work on a dagger that he made. The engraving work looked great! I wondered what was involved in metal engraving so I did a google search to start some research on it.

I just came from knifeart.com and I saw some pretty amazing handles on the small folding knives they have. They also do a lot of amazing engraving work - and then filling in the lines with very thin gold wire. They tap the wire into the grooves and it looks amazing. I wondered, 'if people make knives this beautiful, transitioning from a functional piece to a luxury art piece, can we do the same thing with razors?'

From an article on Timezone.com (http://www.timezone.com/library/coma...omarticles0034)
I found out more info on hand engraving. I read that engraving in copper or silver or gold isn't as hard as engraving steel (although some people do it), since the metal is softer. For engraving steel it looks like it's recommended to have a neumatic graver.

I then headed over to http://www.handgravers.com/ to check out what is needed to do some engraving work with a neumatic graver. SH*T these little things are expensive!

The engraver alone looks to be $2600, and to upgrade from a rubber butt to a wood ball is $200. maybe it's just a ton of markup for this signature series piece, but I hope that maybe it could be realistically purchased by some of the razor creators or by a talented artist and incorporated into the custom razor creation.


Specifically, some engraving along the spine is what I'm thinking of. (Although some sweet scales like on knifeart.com would be beautiful).

I have a razor that looks similar to the Dorko that sold on ebay here.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ayphotohosting

Here's a picture of some engraving (although probably stamped) on the spine.
http://i6.ebayimg.com/01/i/000/a4/d4/2e9e_3.JPG

It's a little bit more than just 'custom file work'. I think it's much more beautiful, time consuming, and requires more skill too.

Anyone care to weigh in on engraving, and if they feel it is too over-the-top for razors. Anyone feel razors should be more utilitarian and moving in the direction of something like knifeart would be a waste of time?