Thread: Grinding without a belt sander.

Is there a way to grind a hollow ground straight razor without a belt sander.

Not really. There is way you can make things work here and there, but hollow grinding is pretty technical.

Slow or water cooled grinding wheels, the Dovo videos on Youtube are very interesting.

Charlie

These aren't state of the art but I wanted to give it a try with what I had. I used an angle grinder for the roughing in and then switched to a regular bench grinder for the hollow grind. After HT hand /power sanding brought them around.

The Kami has a tapered spine , file worked, and file worked brass liners under giraffe bone scales.
The other has file worked spine , sculpted blade and satinwood scales.

I've since bought a Beaumont 2 x72 and an Evenheat kiln. Hopefully I'll be able to turn out something a bit more respectable looking once I can find the time ,. But these do the job all the same.

It would require a completely outfitted shop for me to produce a functional blade and Mark could probably suffice with a can of sterno, a ball of string and a stick.

Gee I wish I could. Thanks for the vote of confidence. But the new toys should go a long way I hope.

Originally Posted by mycarver

These aren't state of the art but I wanted to give it a try with what I had. I used an angle grinder for the roughing in and then switched to a regular bench grinder for the hollow grind. After HT hand /power sanding brought them around.

The Kami has a tapered spine , file worked, and file worked brass liners under giraffe bone scales.
The other has file worked spine , sculpted blade and satinwood scales.

I've since bought a Beaumont 2 x72 and an Evenheat kiln. Hopefully I'll be able to turn out something a bit more respectable looking once I can find the time ,. But these do the job all the same.

If you don't mind me asking how did you sculpt the blade.

water cooled grinding stone would be my first choice and belt sander the second choice. I'm not good enough with an angle grinder to do what Mark can do with one, but it obviously works the gifted ones. Round slipstones could also be used, but it would tedious and take hours and hours to do.

The basic razor can be done using the angle grinder to just "hog out" metal. It's fast with a metal cutting blade. It cleared out a good part of the hollow grind, the tail, thumb notch shaft and part of the sculpture line on blade. After that it was a bench grinder and a drum sander in a drill for the final strokes.
The sculpt lines were courtesy of a Dremel type tool.

Originally Posted by aaron1234

Is there a way to grind a hollow ground straight razor without a belt sander.

YES! You don't have to have the expensive power tools to start out. Sears makes a wet grinder that I made a couple razors out of for about $50, I then sent them to a pro to HT, then I finished them.

I then picked up a 4x36 belt grinder at Home Depot and made a few more: http://straightrazorpalace.com/forge...tml?highlight=

You can make razors cheaply, you just have to be creative and patient to make your razors. One of our resident pro's, Spazola, made all kind of specialty tools to assist him in the making of razors before he got a 2x72. It can be done, don't let ANYONE tell you it can't.