Thread: manufacture of blades

Does anyone here know how DE blades were manufactured and sharpened? Seems like it would be a real trick to do.

I don't know in details, but I have one old device for sharpening DE blades.

I do know the old ones were made on one long continuous strop and then they were cut at the end. With high speed grinders you can sharpen those things in a fraction of a second. Its all a continuous operation.

There was a show on History or Discovery channel about the story of steel. They showed the process of making the strips of steel that eventually become the multiblade cheap shavers. I wish I could remember the name of the show.

It's one long strip, ground to sharp, into an induction heater to the right temperature then immediately into a liquid nitrogen quench in less than an inch, polished and so forth. Once hardened it's very easy to shear the blades off at exactly the right length then temper them. One big continuous machine as TBS noted. But these are meant to shave only a few times and to be manufactured as cheaply as possible.

It was on the History Channel and it was one of the Modern Marvels. It really was an interesting show.