Thread: First e-bay razor :)

Last night I half submerged my Artist in a commercial Phosphoric acid solution. The patina that developed was even across the spine, bevels, and hollow.

I conclude that my Artist is not nickle plated.

Jonathan

Its pretty clear that there was pitting in the center of the blade. If you polished out the black and pitting, and did not see any evidence of layering, then it is not plated. Simple enough. =)

I polished out the black that was there mostly by using a cloth and some Autosol. However what remains could not be polished out by hand or dremel it seems. What can I use to get rid of it? It seems at a macroscopic level to look like residue from something which was stuck to it (think peeling off a really sticky sticker), but under the scope it seems to be microscopic holes. Can this be polished out with something like steel wool?

Haha, well done! So maybe I am not up to scratch on my chemistry but why do you conclude that it is not nickel plated just because of the even development of patina?

Nickel is much less reactive than carbon steel. Since the patina was uniform the material is likely uniform in composition. I am not a chemist or a metallurgist but this test is good enough for me.

Jonathan

But as long as the razor does not have any parts where the metal underneath is exposed, then the expected reaction would be expected to be uniform would it not?

Update: I read a thread here on SRP where a guy complained of his nickel-plated lathering bowl getting a kind of tarnish after he left his alum block in it. So, I left my alum block resting on my razor for a while (wet) and it produced he following:

In my earlier post #3 I described mine as having a lot of hone ware. The bevel near the spine is just under 1mm, that I felt was plenty to judge by.

Enjoy the polishing you have ahead. I used mine because it had some small pits that needed polished anyway. I was a little sad to see your after experiment pic.

Jonathan

Not sure I understand the part about the hone wear. What do you mean when you say the bevel near the spine? Sorry if I am asking stupid questions but I am new to this stuff and want to learn all about it.

Yeah I wasn't really that happy about doing that to my razor either but I was too curious! I am sure it will polish out fine anyway, its the other marks that will be tough!

I'm not sure if you can see but after all my honing the spine has become more worn down and although it does look a bit shinier from the high grit stones, it looks like a normal razor. I am just confused now to be honest!

On another note, I cant seem to sharpen the bloody thing. I honed it on the 4k and 8k just like Lynn does with the circle method plus x strokes. Then I done a few passes on the coticule and although it WOULD cut arm hair, it would not do so enthusiastically and laughed at me when I tried to do the HHT.

By now I was pretty frustrated with the razor and I was keen to try my new "roo" strop, so I gave it a go.

I did 50 passes on the hard wool felt and 100 passes on the leather and WOW, what a difference!! Hanging hairs split on contact, and arm hairs popped off like lemmings ordered off a cliff

I gave it about 10 (light) passes on the felt again this morning with the 0.5 micron diamond spray on it which was left to dry overnight, and then another 100 on the leather, but the shave was not what I expected!

I shaved the cheek areas with no difficulty really but still not as good as i thought it would be. As I progressed further to the neck and chin area etc, it became so difficult it felt like I had to shave my skin off along with the hair to get results. Obviously this resulted in a sore face and the return of my frustration with this razor.

Am I doing something wrong with it? Does it need to be much sharper before going to the strop? Can a strop give the illusion of sharpness only to have the edge fall apart when it hits the face?