Thread: Make me smile

How I made a frowning razor, smile.

Recently on a couple of other threads the subject of how to hone a razor into a smile. Recently I picked up a Clauss razor in the wild for $15, yes they are out there, and it looked a little lob sided. Measuring it, I discovered it had a bit of a frown and wider toe (.7580), than heel (.7445), a swayback spine, and a muted tip, a good candidate for a smiling razor.

So I thought I would post a photo tutorial of the process. It is pic heavy and will take 3 postings. Sorry about the shaky pics, trying to hold the razor, tools and camera, needed a third hand.

My plan was to make the edge match the spine. I traced the spine on a piece of cardboard, and cut it out, to create a pattern, trace the spine arc with a sharpie on to the blade edge, using the lowest part of the blade (.7260). as the middle. The Sharpie mark is just a guide, the true shape and width is formed by measuring and shaping a little at a time.




Here's the razor as purchased with a little bit of clean up, just polish and some Chrome Ox on the buffer.






Notice the wonky blade and the slight frown.



Some good Measurements confirm my suspicions.












Trace the spine shape



Copy onto the edge



Continued Make Me Smile 2

The Sharpie mark is just a guide, the true shape and width is formed by measuring and shaping a little at a time.

I hand filed with a combination diamond file, 400 on one side, 1K on the other. I ground the toe to .7280 and then the heel, by laying the spine on a foam pad, edge straight up and filed the edge.

The razor is hollow ground and the material thin, was removed easily and quickly with 400 grit. I stopped short just a bit at .7280 and reduce to the full height (.7260) by smoothing/blending the profile with the 1k file and honing. I lowered the corners first, toe & heel to .7280, then using the full width of the 1in file width to smoothed the arc with a rolling cut from the outsides towards the middle, measuring after every few strokes.





Double check your measurements, .7260 is the width of the middle, I don’t want to remove any more width than necessary so ,7260 is what I am shooting for all the way across the width. If you have to remark, WD40 will remove the Sharpie ink.









The tools, the red file is an EZ Lap 1200 diamond file, the yellow black file is a 400/1k Diamond file, pencil, sharpie and a set of calipers.




So here’s what we will be removing up to the line, remember the line is just a guide, measure twice, cut once. Actually measure a bunch.



Filing the edge, start at the corners, toe & heel then blend, measure often.



Take off a little, take a measurement, go slow the metal is thin, using 400 grit.






Getting there



Close enough for now

Continued, Make Me Smile 3

The whole process took but a few minutes, probably spent more time measuring than anything and it honed easily and quickly.

I set the bevel on a 7x2 in, 1k King, that I have been playing with, it easily set the bevel in about 60 or 80 laps, with a muddy slurry, (didn’t really count the laps) and finished on a GS20 after a 12k super stone and stropped on .125um CBN.

It took a nice edge, shaves very well and looks pretty good.



Finished, just needs honing and the heel reshaped



Lowering the heel, required reshaping the heel, look at the first photo and the last one to see the reground heel. The 400 diamond made quick work of it.



Check out the heel... and the point is back... yea...






Here the final edge shape is compared to the pattern of the spine



Finished shape, just needs honing, finish is a little rough, but I plan to rescale and spend some quality sanding and buffer time... later.

All stacked and racked for ya Marty

Good thread

Nice job, it even made me smile, the first time today.

Wow!
Was so cool to see the method you used to do this. Very precise! That blade sure looks great too!
You saved another one!

As an old machinist... and restorer, I like the effort you put in to do it right and thank you from my experiences for the great and useful write up of how to! Beats the mark one eyeball! and slows a restorer down enough to think while doing the work! I like it!
Best of all it was used on a great razor that will now be seeing another few generations of use.
Thank you again!
~Richard

Originally Posted by Geezer

As an old machinist... and restorer, I like the effort you put in to do it right and thank you from my experiences for the great and useful write up of how to! Beats the mark one eyeball! and slows a restorer down enough to think while doing the work! I like it!
Best of all it was used on a great razor that will now be seeing another few generations of use.
Thank you again!
~Richard

Great eye for detail. I learned something new tonight. I think I'm going to have to break down and travel south sometime when on holidays after winter. Learn first hand from a mentor. Nobody in Saskatchewan.....

Terrific walk through of the process. Nice results as well.

Thanks guys, the actual work only took a few minutes, I do like smilers and the Clauss’s, they are nice shaver.