Thread: Unusual materials as related to straight razors

I think it would be difficult to make a hard hone out of CrOx. It has a hexagonal close pack structure and normal "hard" binders are not going to stick to it. I know from experience that if you mix it with standard 2 ton epoxy that it will creep to the bottom side of the dried epoxy. Flip the dried epoxy mix over and it will creep back in the other direction.
I suspect MDF cement would have the same problems, but I have never tried mixing CrOx and MDF cement. It couldn't hurt to try it.

Other metals are the only real good hard binders for CrOx. As in dissolve the CrOx into molten aluminum or silica.

That's about all of the metallurgy on CrOx that I can remember at the moment.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

181??? holy crap,your a pretty smart Guy, sometimes

Crap...I left out the decimal again....let me try again...that should have read: 18.1

Originally Posted by guitstik

You mean Mensa don't you? Already a member and there are more like me than you'd think.

No I meant About the Mega Society,
Mensa is for the common folks.

Originally Posted by livingontheedge

No I meant About the Mega Society,
Mensa is for the common folks.

I am not even in that percentile group. On the
Stanford-Binet I scored a 153. But, I really don't believe in "IQ" tests because they are simply a tool used to separate individuals into groups. IQ testing was originally started in Germany during Hitlers rise to power as a way to "prove" that certain ethnic groups were inferior to the pure Aryan race. IQ testing in the 30's, 40's and 50's was used in the U.S. as a way to prove that blacks were not as smart as whites. It was found that if you broke it down by regions, Norther blacks were smarter than Southern whites and as you can imagine, that didn't go over so well in the South. It is not the IQ that defines a man it is what he has accomplished in his life that matters and since I have not achieved anything of substance then the IQ is meaningless. I have raised and provided for my family the best that I could and that is all I care about at this point in my life.

Originally Posted by criswilson10

I think it would be difficult to make a hard hone out of CrOx.

About all I know about chrom-ox is that it is green, and mixed with listerine it looks good in the skin when tattooing leaves, palms and the like. What intrigued me about the Chosera 1k is that it is the same color as chrom-ox and in the plastic tray I soak the 1k in, there is a green residue that looks awfully like it.

(kidding about using it to tattoo, but the green powder I've mixed tattooing ink with for 30 years sure looks like it )

Originally Posted by guitstik

I am not even in that percentile group. On the
Stanford-Binet I scored a 153. But, I really don't believe in "IQ" tests because they are simply a tool used to separate individuals into groups. IQ testing was originally started in Germany during Hitlers rise to power as a way to "prove" that certain ethnic groups were inferior to the pure Aryan race. IQ testing in the 30's, 40's and 50's was used in the U.S. as a way to prove that blacks were not as smart as whites. It was found that if you broke it down by regions, Norther blacks were smarter than Southern whites and as you can imagine, that didn't go over so well in the South. It is not the IQ that defines a man it is what he has accomplished in his life that matters and since I have not achieved anything of substance then the IQ is meaningless. I have raised and provided for my family the best that I could and that is all I care about at this point in my life.

You've taken a serious detour off the main point of the opening post, "Unusual materials as related to straight razors",,,, is this the new route for this thread?

How did this one get so out of hand without me? Seems downright impossible!

Oh! it was out of hand from the start.. get some rest, Stik!

No, it should be about making razor related items from cement. It has gotten WAY off track hasn't it? I told you my brain was defective.

Originally Posted by guitstik

... I told you my brain was defective.

We knew that...

A small update on the American Hone Company and Barber Hones

Merle Johnson, who bought the American Hone Co. already had a business or two - Perfecto Products / Success Barber Supply Company. The American Hone Co was in Olean, NY and Merle moved it to Moravia, Iowa, to where his other business was (still is):



In 1946 Perfecto was a subsidiary of the Success Barber Co and supplied heavy duty agricultural implements to farmers among other things. Robert Grubbs ran things and another employee was called Hiatt. Different spelling from Hyatt, but you never know... The Barber Supply part was headed by Mr. Johnson (he was also President of Perfecto), said to be a 'barber all his life' and his company was the only one in Appanoose County having a permit for manufacturing alcohol, which was used in their shampoos, tonics, hair products, etc. Of course, after its acquisition by Mr. Johnson (1950?) the American Hone Co became another subsidiary company.

With regard to the young lady, her name appears loads of times with different spellings according to different sources, eg 'Louise', Louis' and 'Lois' - I think I plumped for the wrong version and that it should have been Lois, like superman's girlfriend! Anyhow from when she graduated school (early 1950s?) to her death in 2004, she worked, sometimes part-time, making and supervising the hone making for the barber supply company. She closely guarded the knowledge for whatever reason. I thought she left an exercise book of recipes behind, but it was really a box of index cards. A lot of the company's trade came from making hones for companies like C'Mon, and each other company - they ran into the hundreds - would have individual requirements, so although the hones were basically of very few different types, the index cards probably helped 'tweak' each one for a particular company. Randy would know, as he now owns the index cards.

Talking of mis-spellings, in 1946 a newspaper recording Mr Johnson's involvement with Success and Perfecto called him Merrill instead of the 'Merle' I have read about elsewhere - personally I have always thought the latter was a girls name, so the former variant might well be correct...

Indeed, even the Hyatt surname may be incorrect - it seems more credible to me that the name was really Lois Hiatt. so perhaps she was related to that employee of Perfecto back in 1946... Indeed, consulting the electoral rolls reveals a Lois J Hiatt, born 1932, died in or around 28th December 2003. The dates are certainly good matches. Her birthplace - Moravia, Appanoose, Iowa, is good too.

There were also another couple of methods used. One, which was probably the preserve of the American Hone Co before Merle (or Merrill) bought it because the process is so old, is to use gum (eg gum arabic) as a binder. To this is added potassium dichromate (highly carcinogenic, though when I left college we used to mix it by the gallon to harden felt hats and harden the gum used in making silkscreen frames for printing). In the presence of sunlight or ultra violet light, the pot. di. changes the gum - it hardens it into a base which is no longer soluble with water. I would think that this made quite a fragile hone.

The other process was a cold process, in which the mix was poured into a mould and a hydraulic press was applied - presumably this removed most of the water, leaving a solid cake which could be turned out of the mold and left to harden, or to place in another mould with another pour on top to make a two sided hone - this would have undergone the press treatment too. This type of hone would - I think - not be as hard as the baked hone.

Regards,
Neil