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Thanks for that, I'm sure guys are scouring the web for crocus as we speak. :) Two things I find interesting, the 1-1/2" wide and mixing the crocus powder with kerosene. I guess the kerosene is a good vehicle, penetrating the hide then evaporating ? Perhaps that would also be good for mixing with chrom-ox powder ? To transfer to leather so that it didn't end up with a cloud of green dust every time you go to strop on it.
Note that the author recommended horsehide if you could get it with cowhide the second choice. The width is puzzling to me. I would have thought 2 to 3 inches would have been the recommendation. Also, a third puzzlement, the assertion that a hanging strop will create a rounded edge over time, since you cannot pull it tight enough to avoid the wear.
Not the first time I've read that stropping will do that, but I've seen that attributed to pasted strops IIRC, more than clean hide. For SRP members who hone their own, or even those who send it out, not a terrible burden to bear. Anyway, thanks for posting that.
Curious to know what "dry bar" crocus is. Is it something with less wax than a buffing compound, or is it something with no wax? If there's wax, the kerosene is understandable.
figure that if a strop is pulled tight, it probably will never cause the problem described, but maybe everyone didn't pull their strop as tight as some of us do. At any rate, paying the barber to hone the razor every 6 months isn't the worst thing in the world. What do you think they charged, something equivalent to 5 bucks today, I'd bet.
I'd have guessed 2 inches on flat strop if I had to bet at lloyds of london, but maybe the narrow version is preferred because some razors aren't properly straightened by the cutler after they're heat treated or ground (can't remember what order they do the steps, and how long you can tap the razor and bend it after heat treating).
I found this in ref to crocus:Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveW
"Crocus
A ferrous oxide abrasive material consisting of coarse grains of ferrous or iron oxide that is used for grinding metal before polishing. Finer grains are called rouge"
Right. The holtzapffel book describes it as iron oxide mixed with other abrasives, so it probably has a range. I'm wondering what "dry bar" crocus means vs. just crocus. If it's a bar held together with wax, it would make sense to cut it with kerosene.
Kerosene may have just been mentioned because it was available, inexpensive, would cut the compound bar and wouldn't evaporate from the leather or hurt it
There are still some woodworkers who use kerosene as their solvent of all things (to keep things clean, to soak/store oilstones, etc)
Years ago, reading about it in gunsmithing books, I went to a machinist's supply and bought crocus cloth. Essentially like sandpaper, and IIRC, twas in a roll about 2" wide. No idea about bars of the stuff. Our diamond pastes, chrom-ox, and other abrasives available probably supercede crocus anyhow ?
I'm going to ask someone who was a toolmaker at colonial williamsburg (and a gunsmith among other things) to see what his thoughts are about crocus. It sounds like just a mix of iron oxide and pretty much any other more active underlying abrasive. I'm assuming some of the folks on here at least have tried 0.1 micron iron oxide pigment, and been surprised given its softness how fast the razor blacks it at least until the razor is polished, but I can understand if maintenance was an issue that mixing it with silex/crushed silica or al-ox might make for a nice cut/polish combination.
Same person mentioned they were using WOA hones to polish the silver there (at CW) and they have become harder to get.
Even if it wasn't something commonly used for razors, for hundreds and hundreds of years, silversmiths and other metalsmiths have been polishing metal. I got chewed out one time by a guy who makes 18th century style planes when I proposed the question of whether it would've been to the benefit of 18th century woodworkers to have the ability to polish their blades to the point that we can now. He suggested the assortment of fine polishing powders, etc, were plenty common and widely available that people could've used them if they'd have wanted to.
Keep in mind much advice given in years gone by was not based on any real objective standard. Often time it was just someone's opinion or based on lore and rumor and barbershop conversation.
Like Jimmy said most modern products are superior to the old ones.
I think that depends. Products sold to professionals have never been lacking, but products sold to the unsuspecting public pretty much went across the spectrum like they do now.
And there wasn't a lot of consumer protection, so everything was "the best" or "the finest".
Yet ancient old natural hones are so highly prized in the straight razor community.............just saying :DQuote:
Originally Posted by thebigspendur
I was wandering about the comment that you can't hold a flexible strop tight enough to not round the edge. Is that true? Is there really that much of an advantage to a paddle type strop?
Not that I've seen. I think someone here maintained a razor without stones, etc, and on a hanging strop to prove otherwise. That and there have definitely been folks who maintained their razors only on strops - all you have to do is go look at used razors to see plenty that have been maintained only with abrasive pastes on strops.
I talked to the former toolmaker at colonial Williamsburg, and he said he'd used a lot of crocus cloth an what they had was mostly very fine iron oxide, very messy, and very slow cutting.
Which makes it sound like mostly iron oxide and not much else. This same guy had been ordering a lot of American hone co products and said they were about $6 each when he got them in the 70s.
They still had a couple super punjabs in stock there for $20 for the trade employees until recently.
Anyway, he didn't tell me which trades used the crocus yet.
Yes but many of the folks inhabiting this site are crazy people anyway.:rofl2:
I've often wondered if a true honemeister honed up a bunch of razors using an assortment of high end hones could a blindfolded straight shaver tell the difference if a pro barber used them on him?
Thank you for the research. I found that informative:bow:Quote:
Originally Posted by mike1011
About 20-25 years ago I purchased 'Salt Peter' at a drugstore to help my father try to recreate the cured bacon's' that he knew growing up on the homestead.
It's technical name is Potassium Nitrate. Would have thunk? :shrug:
I have used horse hide on a paddle for all most 2 years. Most of my razors are still honed at 8k and yet to need more. I just used a 7/8 Goldedge this a.m. that I bought a year and a half ago. Now I haven't used it in 6 months but I put it to the paddle this morning to see if I have spoiled myself with the new hones I have now. It shaved just fine although it is going to see more hone soon :<0) And this post reminds me that I may have a strop just as described in the OP's post.
Horse hide Start
Attachment 169276
Black leather Finish
Attachment 169277
I have some crocus cloth and I am now wondering if I could get some off and into the leather ?
This might be a cool restore if I could put some new horse on it and get the crocus imbedded. I was just going to leave it in the collection untouced and maybe I should and just make a new one like it. Like I need 1 more thing to do LOL.
Thanks for the info Bongo :<0)
Go for it, let us know how it turns out. I'm sure you're probably aware, but I'd separate it from the paper outside. It's going to look like someone left a rusty barrel wherever you do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by 10Pups
The craftsman I mentioned sent me a message just now saying that he doesn't use crocus cloth now that he's not a toolmaker/instrument maker/jeweler/gun maker/machinist (he's retired, but wore a lot of hats - though unfortunately only ever made two razors) because it's so messy and the iron oxide gets everywhere and is a mess. He's using more modern polishes that make less of a mess.
I've got some pigment on the floor of my basement bathroom that refuses to come off, too. If it gets in or on unfinished wood, it quickly goes right into the grain and stains bigtime.
Probably not if they were all done well, though some of the coticules I've had were incapable of really getting an edge sharp - I think they could be differentiated. I couldn't differentiate the hard natural stones honed well from chromium oxide finished edges.Quote:
Originally Posted by thebigspendur
Millions ? Not sure how many ........ but myriads of professional barbers have used hanging strops to 'straighten the edge' on their razors for over a hundred, or two, years. Not to mention the other millions of straight razor shavers who've also used a hanging strop. All the years I've been using straight razors I've used a hanger 99% of the time. I'm not knocking paddle or flatbed strops. I have one, use it when I feel like that is what the razor needs, and it is a good tool in the arsenal, but hanging strops are the dominant method historically, and currently AFAIK.Quote:
Originally Posted by tintin
Concerning the mixture in question, crocus and kerosene, a modern day mixture equivalent would be valve lapping paste. It comes in different grits and the grit (silicon carbide, & etc.) is suspended in a light grease. I've used it several times to "lap in" the locking lugs of bolt action rifles. IMO we have much better products for straights as has been stated. The polishing rouges, crox, diamond spray, and etc. create much better results for our purposes.
Thanks for sharing the newspaper article! Great to see yesteryears technology.
What the article claims about not needing to hone a razor is false. The author does not understand cutting edge behavior and metallurgy.
Well, if the compound were on the back side of the strop, you literally could get by without ever honing the razor.
Once abrasive particles are suitably fine (as the crocus product he's talking about may be), it really doesn't matter how the edge is honed as long as it's not with great pressure.
Valve lapping compounds are in the 100-300 grit range, but crocus cloth is a very slow polishing compound that is much slower than something like autosol (which is 3 micron alumina). Presume the crocus they're talking about is a fine grade like a jewelers rouge, and if it had alumina in it back then, or crushed corundum, it very well may have maintained a razor just fine.
I'm a machinist and have used crocus. I'm pretty sure it's just FeO - Ferric Oxide - or rust. It's obviously not just scraped off a bumper, it's finely graded and only very small particles. Not a very fast abrasive and in the machining sphere the cloth strips are not useful for a whole lot other than polishing non-ferrous metals. The compound is useful for buffing steel with a wheel very fine though. I could see it working pretty well for a strop paste as long as you got a fine grade of powder or stick. Would take a heck of a lot longer to cut than CrO though.
If you back around 250 years, and more, you find that crocus and emery, together with glue, were some of the major consumables bought by the Sheffield edge-tool, knife and razor industries. Crocus and emery gave two very different finishes - known as 'crocus finish' and 'emery finish'.
Crocus finish was a mirror finish, with clear, bright reflections. A pretty hard wheel was used ('leather lap' - wood lapped with leather, usually walrus or seal hide because of its thickness) because material wheels left lines that were not called for in this type of finish. The wheel could also be a lead lap - wood bound with lead (gave a superior finish - before applying the crocus the lead was hatched with an old razor so it could hold a good charge). On these wheels the crocus was mixed with suet (animal fat) and/or beeswax, and 'bouldered' in - that is a smooth pebble (the boulder - a smooth translucent flint or pebble, about the size of a flattened hens egg) was used to press the crocus into the wheel - this reduced the abrasiveness of the crocus and smoothed the wheel at the same time.
The use of beeswax was to further flatten or deaden the emery or crocus - a finer finish was obtained in this way. Bouldering plus plenty of beeswax was the order of the day for lead laps and crocus mirror finishing.
Although long abandoned in Sheffield, the crocus finish was still used by some German cutlery firms - Giesen & Forsthoff spring to mind - as late as the 1950s.
Incidentally, the latin name 'crocus martis' has been used for almost any form of impure red coloured iron oxide or copperas (ferrous sulphate known from ancient times as green vitriol because of its blue green colour) from a very early time.
Glaze finish was achieved using emery. If you look closely at this type of finish you will see a multitude of tiny parallel lines - the sign of an authentic blue-glaze finish. A glazing wheel was leather (leather lap) and glue was used to stick the emery to it. I have made this type myself - they make a really fine cutting wheel, but unless the surface is lightly hit with a hammer to induce crazed cleavage lines into it bits are apt to fly off and embed themselves in you. You could get a glossier emery finish - this was achieved using very fine 'flower emery' mixed with suet (animal fat) and beeswax - it was known as 'flowering'.
Crocus is used again on a polishing wheel. It is smaller than a glazer or lead lap and revolves at a slower rate. It is made of wood lapped with leather, and dry crocus s dusted on it. This is the final stage of a crocus finish.
Crocus is indeed an oxide of iron. But there are a few types. It is not, for instance, 'jewellers rouge' which is an iron oxide. Jewellers rouge is used (the clue lies in the name!) by (gasp!) jewellers! It is only mildly abrasive but because it is so fine-cutting it is used on the soft metals regularly employed by jewellers (gold, silver) and gives a first-rate finish to them (as well as staining your hands, fingers and flying off everywhere - don't ask me how I know!) but it does not cut metal well enough to be used on it. Even among the jewellers rouges there are several degrees of powder/bar available, all with greater or lesser cutting power. The harder stuff could conceivably be used on steel, but the finish it gave would be coarser than true crocus.
There is another oxide of iron that is black in colour rather than red ('rouge') and this type is quite hard and can be used to cut iron and steel. The old crocus was much darker than modern rouge due to a high level of the black oxide in it and the red oxide beginning to turn black which has a kind of purple hue. Artisans making crocus would fire iron oxide in small crucibles, firing many at one time. It was found that at the bottom and edges of the crucible the crocus was darker - this was saved for the cutlery trades. In the middle it was red and softer - this was saved for jewellers.
At the time crocus and rouge was prepared in this way from a solution of sulphate of iron or copperas subjected to a high heat to drive of the acid and leave behind the lesser calcined rouge and the more calcined crocus. A little distinction, but it meant everything back in the day. In fact another way of making jewellers rouge was sometimes employed using peroxide of iron (ammonia + water + sulphate of iron), washing it thoroughly, squeezing all the water out by compressing it into cake and then leaving it on a low red heat before grinding.
So, it was a bit of an 'eyeball' process and I suspect the stuff varied from firing to firing.
Some people confuse emery with crocus - this is wrong, they are not the same. Emery is a mineral containing a very hard substance called corundum - aluminium oxide, together with other elements like rutile. The synthetic version may also contain magnesium and silica.
Bar crocus is simply crocus formed into a bar. It must have had something to hold it together that set fairly well and which could be dissolved with kerosene. Rio Grande jewellers supplies still sell 'bar crocus' but it is just rouge set into a bar with wax like other modern wheel-applied compounds.
Not one type of rag or cotton wheel was used in Sheffield - they blurred the edges of the workpiece too much. All wheels were relatively hard, from the sandstone grinding wheels, including the wooden lead and leather lapped glazing and polishing wheels. Sometimes, for bits like tangs, etc, the wood was used alone, unadorned with leather or lead.
Regards,
Neil
Thanks Neil! excellent info.
So in the back of workshop in a dusty box from the back of my grandfather's workshop in a dusty box, I have crocus circa 1935. One bar made with tallow and paste sealed in a metal can with kerosene. The box the bar was in is labeled 1938 and the price was 10 cents (US). The metal can I would guess was from the 1970s, had to pry it open with a screw driver, and reeked of kerosene. No price on it and only a masking tape label.
I'm including pictures for those of you that wanted to know what it looked like. (Assuming I attached them correctly)
Here is the block:
Attachment 169493
Here is the paste:
Attachment 169494
Here is the paste on a knife blade:
Attachment 169495
Here is what happens after you handle the block:
Attachment 169498
That looks awfully like the tins of grease-bound 'Clova' lapping compound I have, made from emery flower (grey) rather than crocus (dark purplish red).Quote:
Originally Posted by criswilson10
I think it goes all the way from a coarse 80 grit to an extra fine 2000 grit. But it is not true crocus, as crocus is not dark grey.
The only way I can conceive of it being called crocus is in the same way people loosely refer to vacuum cleaners as 'hoovers' when the fact of the matter is that although they all vacuum up dirt, only one brand is a Hoover.
Regards,
Neil
The hard block is a deep purple - well the part that isn't moldy. The grit is very fine, I'd say around 10,000, maybe a bit higher or lower, but definitely above 8,000.
That is some nasty stuff that is hard to wash off and it smells like rancid leather. The stink didn't wash off easy either. I understand why people switched to other media.
You could be right about the paste not being true Crocus but being loosely referred to as crocus. That can definitely looks like a Clover Lapping Compound can. I would guess it is around 2000 grit. It smells of kerosene instead of the grease that Clover uses and it is darker blue than the grey 80 grit Clover compound that I have. It does appear to be iron oxide.
In the end I guess it is just a dusty hand labeled can of some kind of home made lapping paste. Now that it is out of the dusty box I'll use it up restoring a very beat up rusted wood chisel. I bar and its box are going into a ziplock bag and covered with silica dessicant to hopefully dry that smell out before buzzards start circling my workshop.
I reckon you are right about the tinned stuff, Cris, and the bar - it doesn't look purple on my monitor but you get an awful lot of colour casts and wrong colours from screen to screen. Yes, the bar must be crocus - the good, hard kind because of the colour.
I have a bar of compound that stinks too - as soon as it hits the wall it smells like a dead goat is in the workshop - that really 'goaty' smell, if you know what I mean. I went to a leather market in Egypt and the overall smell in the high heat was dog excrement and goat. Turns out they used the dog poo to tan the leather - break the fibres down. It was hard to nail down which was the most objectionable smell, especially since the traders had a smell all their own, too. I didn't buy anything.
I reckon the binder in your bar has gone off after all these years. Perhaps you could experiment with a cut off bit - use kerosene to dissolve it and pour off to leave the sludge, let dry, then melt into another binder, something like bobbing wax maybe. Not sure if I would have the courage to do that though!
Regards,
Neil
I think I'm going to honor what I believe is a family tradition with this bar. I'm going to chunk it back into the dusty box and let the next generation find it. ";"
