Thread: Is cryo treatment of vintage razors worth doing?

I do my own cryo treatment in liquid nitrogen, wonder if I should try it on my straight razors. Would it make any difference?

Give Mike Blue a PM asking him his opinion. Hopefully he'll post some thoughts here. He had a lot of interesting things to say about cryo at the MN meet up. I believe the question about cryo on vintage blades was posed to Mike by Utopian (Ron).

Chris L

What sort of materials do you do cryo treatment to?

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

What sort of materials do you do cryo treatment to?

Thanks for the response. I normally cryo treat speaker cables.

Here's a thread where I posted some of my thoughts a few months ago, about cryo applications to steel. The principle of how deep freezing works would be the same for speaker wires, just limited to copper or aluminum whatever the conductor material is.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/forge...treatment.html

Old razors will likely not benefit from cryo treatment since they would be predominantly high carbon low alloy materials. It might be possible for some post 1900 razors to be stainless materials that might benefit from cryo treatment but would also require a tempering cycle afterward.

Unless you knew how a particular razor was heat treated, and the materials, it would be difficult to predict any benefit.

Originally Posted by cotdt

Thanks for the response. I normally cryo treat speaker cables.

What is the purpose of this? What does it achieve? Just curious.

Essentially the deep freezing causes the crystalline metallic structure to form a smaller shape, packing more crystals into a tighter lattice.

For copper wire there should be greater contact for electron transmission improving efficiency.

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

Essentially the deep freezing causes the crystalline metallic structure to form a smaller shape, packing more crystals into a tighter lattice.

For copper wire there should be greater contact for electron transmission improving efficiency.

What happens when the material returns to room temperture? Will this effect be permanent?

For practical purposes, say in the context of a human lifetime, the changes will be permanent. There are some anecdotal reports of historical blades (swords) being of a legendary level of hardness, but when tested centuries later, do not measure up to the legend physically. The laws of entropy still operate, but at a scale where we do not live long enough to personally see any changes.

Originally Posted by jcw122

What is the purpose of this? What does it achieve? Just curious.

Being able to sell the audio cables at 100$ per meter to audiophiles