Thread: Cryogenics - check it out...

Well, I don't know didley about this metalurgical mumbo jumbo however I do have a gaggle of ducks and the wonderedge will hold its edge longer than any of the others and longer than most stainless razors I have. Does it shave any better? the answer is no. There are other razors that use that process mostly stainless. I have a puma stainless marked frozen steel on the shank and I believe Henkels uses it also on their stainless razors. Also remember most of these razors were manufactured when you could endow anything with whatever magical properties you cared to name. There were no consumer protection laws then.

Hey Fredvs79,

Where are you working? I'm here in Massachusetts wrapping up my postdoc work at a little outfit in Cambridge.

I've brought up the possability of cryo treating straight razors in the past for much the same reasons that you did.

My approach was to go from RT --> -20 C --> -80C --> -140 C --> liq N2 O/N and back, slowly. BUT, I never got around to it

THEN there was the question of which blade to sacrifice for this experiment and how to control for any noticable differences, etc...

..have not gotten to it. Plus, exeriments, life, and razor restoration began to interest me more

Here is a kicker though, imagine if you could cryo treat a Pakistani Razor and make them into amazing shavers....THERE is a market to make money with!

C utz

My understanding of paki razors is that they're crappy because of the quality of steel they use. Crappy steel is crappy steal no matter how you treat it. if it's got dirt in the mix, the edge will crumble at the same point or even sooner no matter how you manipulate the steel right? They need to run it through hotter furnaces to better purify it I'd say. then treat away.

You can make a bad blade out of good steel but you can't make a good blade out of bad steel and the Paki blades are made out of junk steel. A decent steel costs more per inch than a "finished" Pakistani razor does. My guess is that the carbon level is very, very low and the heat treatment, if any is horrible - or ineffective, but you can't get a good heat treat with bad steel.

What makes steel "good" or "bad?" Can "bad" steel be reformed and taught the error of its ways? Is steel a product of its environment, or is it born with an innate goodness or badness?

Despite my lighthearted prose, I really do want to know.

Let's hope my explanation isn't too far out there as I'm not a metallurgist by any stretch of imagination lol. Steel is an alloy of iron and other stuff (most commonly carobon) that's supposed to make it harder and more elastic. Depending on what you add to it it can have different properties like more hardness, corosion resistance, elasticity, fine grain etc etc etc. For razors, the two main one are fine grain (so it takes a fine edge) and hardness (so it keeps the fine edge). If the mix of iron and trace materials isn't right, no amount of heat-treating will give it the hardness/fine grain that it needs to become an adequate shaver.

Late getting into this one,
but unless I've misread something somewhere, the DD Wonderedge was not advertised as being cryogenically treated at all (I have a few but am considering selling one or two...I HATE being broke) but rather they laud the electrical tempering process, where there is greater control over the temperature than in other methods which usually involve some form of insulation (as I understand, the steel is heated, then quenched, after which it is quite brittle...then the tempering process takes place, where it is again heated, then forced to cool much more slowly, giving the steel its toughness. I don't recall ever reading any material claiming the Wonderedges were cryogenically tempered, unless perhaps the stainless ducks were (?) Not saying the others were not, but I do not recall actually seeing it being claimed anywhere that the WE's were cryo-tempered. Perhaps I'm wrong, but just don't recall seeing it anywhere.
Cryogenic tempering was, however, a process used on many higher quality stainless razors, the Henckels "Friodur" (ALWAYS a stainless, or INOX razor) Hess "frozen temper" or even the Dovo "ice temper" stainless blades.
Perhaps someone can shed some light on this, or perhaps has something with better info than I do....until then, I think the Wonderedge's largest advantage is the manufacturer's ability to keep the steel at a certain temperature much longer and cool much slower as a result of the electric oven process they used (as opposed to placing the steel in an insulating media which retards cooling, but is nowhere near as controlled as an electric temper, nor does it keep the steel at certain temperatures as long....
I think that's it anyway.

John P.

Straight from the horse's mouth (the blurb on my wonderedge box):

This is a dubl duck Wonderedge

The World's Finest Razor! This dubl duck Wonderedge Razor is made from a special Swedish alloy steel. It's inner strucdture has been improved by a new process of electrical hardening accompanied by deep freezing at extremely low temperatures.

This special process produces a steel with an extremely sharp cutting edge that cuts cleanly and lasts longer than any razor you have ever used before. The Wonderedge Razor glides smoothly and easily over the blargle blargle blargle shave without smarting or scraping.

So yeah, they claim it's been cryo treated.

Well there you go then.
Needless to say I don't have the boxes with mine at the moment.
Still, I think the electrically controlled temper might have as much to do with it as the cryo (?)
John P.

Originally Posted by JohnP

Still, I think the electrically controlled temper might have as much to do with it as the cryo (?)

From what the more metallurgically-knowledgable on the forum have said that would appear to be the case, though the manufacturer may not have known that (or necessarily have cared - it's something else for the marketing guys to brag about).