Thread: What are you working on?

" I just about extruded my cloaca in the process."
I hate when that happens!

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Difficult but not impossible. I cut hardened steel all the time. If you do it correctly with the right type of cutter It's not as big an issue as you might think. In fairness it's certainly not something you'd want to do by hand. Most safes are rated based on their drill time which is normally in minutes. Map and plan safes like they use in the military are rated in hours and that's in time of actual contact between the drill point and the metal not including the time setting up your rig or changing bits. There are some that have ball bearings embedded in the hard plate. Hardenef steel like a razor a file will skate off of. Ball bearings are so hard that you'll strip the teeth off of a file with them and not even polish it. They make a bit called a ball buster which you put in a hammer drill. You drill with a carbide tipped safe bit until you get to the ball bearing then switch to the ball busterbecause the ball bearing is harder than the carbide and it will wear the car by out or break it. What it does is shatter the ball bearing then you pick the pieces out and continue drilling with your bit for the hard plate steel. It's normally suggested that you use a mechanized drill rig. I've done it by hand pushing the drill. That's not a lot of fun. I just about extruded my cloaca in the process.

It's hard to see it in this picture because it's inside a plastic package with a wax coating over it but that's what it looks like.

Edit:I got so busy talking about the bit that I forgot to include my point about the ball bearings. Even is hard as the bearing is you can still cut it with a Dremel and a cutting wheel or an angle grinder. There's virtually nothing that a diamond cutting wheel won't cut.

I doubt at the time that razor was made that they had anything like the tools you mentioned. It does not rule out that those bottom jimps were done at a later date but I have my doubts on that.

Bob

Originally Posted by BobH

I doubt at the time that razor was made that they had anything like the tools you mentioned. It does not rule out that those bottom jimps were done at a later date but I have my doubts on that.

Bob

No, what I'm saying is I think the top jimps were possibly done later as part of a regrind. I think that the jimps underneath were probably original to the blade and very carefully hand cut with a file. As far as the hardened metal when you do a regrind you're cutting the hardened metal It's just a wider pass. If It's possible to regrind a blade then why wouldn't it be possible to do a very narrow swath and create a jimp? Especially on a machine made for such a thing but just using a very narrow blade instead of a very wide one which is what a grinding wheel is.

Edit: also I'm thinking that if there were a regrind done it was probably a long time afterward using more modern machinery and giving it a more modern look.

Thing is with this kind of stuff you will never know one way or the other because it is all supposition in most cases. It is basically what ever you want to believe.

Bob

It's funny you should say that Bob because I was actually just thinking that right after I posted that last response. You'll never really know for certain with most of this stuff. You're definitely right about that.
Hey, while I'm supposing can I suppose that I'm the world's most interesting man?

I think they were original to the blade. Most, if not all, top jimps I have seen were more coarse than the lowers.

Like this

Speaking of regrinds, in this same lot I got this Frederick Reynolds. Perhaps I'm supposing again but look at this one.

Does it look to anyone else like this has been reground?


You can still see some of the striations from the stone or belt as the case may be.

Especially along the spine and the tail near the pivot. Although it doesn't show up as well as I'd like in this pic.

I guess this could be original factory grinding marks but I would think they'd polish it up more than that wouldn't they? As I said before about the other ones, it seems as though whoever did it did a pretty good job at least functionally because every one that I have honed out of this group has taken a perfect narrow very even bevel the whole length of the blade.

Lots of FR razors did not have a high degree of finish. The tang-stamps tell the tale?

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Lots of FR razors did not have a high degree of finish. The tang-stamps tell the tale?

Yeah I noticed there was still a lot of definition in the stamping but It's sometimes depends on how hard you hit the stamp when your stamping as to how deep it goes but I did notice that too Tom. Maybe I've just got regrind on the brain and I'm looking for it now.

It's funny, I've worked in a family business almost all my life. My father apprenticed me when I was a kid. He had his own business which he closed as he got a little older and went to work for the man who later became my father-in-law. I worked there also. We use the individual letter and number stamps and it became very well known around the shop that if he was stamping something you'd better pay attention because he hit it so hard he'd startle you and make you almost jump out of your skin.