Thread: What are you working on?

Nice vase save.
The horn is spetacular.
The brass lead combo is looking good.
The steel is too hard to be able to do much with a regular file. You can use diamond files or wet dry wrapped around a round or roundish piece of wood. It is a lot of work to do file work on hardened steel, even with diamonds. I’d leave it. Perhaps you might like to experiment on a dead blade. Dead blades are always handy for stuff like that. I never toss the ones that are beyond repair, they still have learning value.

Scouthikerdad: There was a bit of cussing involved with the wedge, but I might have finally won the battle. If I do anything to the spine I was thinking a little low speed grinding with the dremmel and final shape with diamond file and sand paper.

Rezdog: I got a bit lucky with the horn, it was a single slab cut down the middle (not book-matched), the streaks just happened to line up with really similar orientations. I thought this was a dead blade and had slated it for lots of practice, including some spine work. I guess that's why I'm waffling, I hadn't expected this to live and don't want to mess it up now that it's alive again.

Thanks guys, you've helped me make up my mind. I'll leave it for now, I can always come back to it later.

Not sure when or how I got this one. I dug it out of the to-do drawer. Kobar. No other markings. After a little investigating I found it was made around 1920 in Solingen.

I pulled it out of the drawer and found lots of hone wear, the toe had been honed extremely rounded, Scratches in the blade like someone used 80 grit on the blade face to remove rust and the scales were warped. After some high angle honing I got the edge in closer to the proper shape matching the shape of the spine. Reworked the stabilizer, straightened the scales, Sanded out most of the deep scratches in the blade and repinned it with home made collars and brass pins.

Sorry, No before pics and here it is after a few hours. Ready for the stones.

Jelly, prepare yourself, as Rez said that Frederick is hard, hard, hard. I don't know what they did to them but the one I have gave me a fit just sanding out stains.

Nice looking razor Jerry. I don't know how it looked before but it looks pretty doggone good now. I always liked scales that come to a point like those. I like the inlay also. It reminds me of the guy on the Moretti label.

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Jelly, prepare yourself, as Rez said that Frederick is hard, hard, hard. I don't know what they did to them but the one I have gave me a fit just sanding out stains.

Oh yeah, this steel is hard. I don't know how many hours I spent getting to clean steel on the edge. Honed it up last night and I spent about twice as much time on each stone as normal. Reminds me of Genco/Geneva steel, hope the test shave on Sunday goes well. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I'll be posting pics of the finished product and a new acquisition this weekend.

Thanks Paul. The picture of the front side has shine on the spine so you cant really see what I did. Sanded the bottom edge of the hone wear and blended it in to the spine. The back side shows the hone wear taken out. You just gotta watch the thickness of the spine so it stays close to the same thickness.

Originally Posted by JellyJar

Oh yeah, this steel is hard. I don't know how many hours I spent getting to clean steel on the edge. Honed it up last night and I spent about twice as much time on each stone as normal. Reminds me of Genco/Geneva steel, hope the test shave on Sunday goes well. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I'll be posting pics of the finished product and a new acquisition this weekend.

Well, hard steel may be "hard" to work with but the up side is it should hold an edge well...once you get it there of course.

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Well, hard steel may be "hard" to work with but the up side is it should hold an edge well...once you get it there of course.

But will it be brittle?

Jerry, I really like those prewar Solingen razors. I have several J.A. Henckels and they all shave like butter. It's funny how steel from different countries has different characters and not necessarily better or worse. My favorite though is still Sheffield steel although by far my best shaver is a Westby that was made in Leicester although that may still be Sheffield steel.