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Hi All, First time posting here, and would appreciate any help/advice you guys might have on fixing my bengall...
I thought about soldering it but its' just not making sense, and i'm wondering whether there has been anyone who has managed to fix something similar?
Thanks in advance!
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Negative. Too big. I have successfully repaired small cracks with silver solder and needle tip soldering iron. I have a W & B I did it to and shaved with it for over a year with no problem.
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Thanks for replying! So i'm guessing you used solder and then sanded to a smooth finish? and would it be possible to solder with carbon steel (if one would find)
Thanks!
Correct.I put flux and a tiny piece of solder on one side. Soldering iron on other side to draw solder towards heat. Then sand smooth and polish.
Works best towards heel. Never tried it close to toe.
Rare! Lots of charm and character! This very old and historical display piece is one of a kind, and a valuable collector's item! Buy It Now, only $375.00!!! LOL!Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeMamo
I have seen worse on fleabay and etsy. But yeah, for a shaver, it's toast. But if aliens had invaded and stripped Earth of all traces of iron and steel on the planet besides this, and so this was the last piece of steel left in the world, I might attempt to drill through at the ends of the cracks to contain the cracking, grind through and through along the cracks, mix aluminum powder with superglue, and fill, with a little excess lapped over the steel on both sides, in the vicinity of the cracks. Soldering will generally heat the steel considerably higher than normal temper heat, so meh. Too difficult. I am thinking just salvage the horn scales and toss the razor unless you have a bunch of similar scrap razors and you want to forge weld them together into a billet. For some reason. LOL
A good candidate for a carving knife.
i get your sarcasm, but the question was whether carbon steel as solder exists? i'd put it in a display before trowing it out - it lasted this long, i won't be the one to end the legacy ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by CrescentCityRazors
No, not that I've heard of.
Haha not sarcasm, at least not directed at you. Just remembering all the busted up razors I have seen for sale online, and sellers mystified as to why a few chunks missing from the razor ought to be such a big deal.Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeMamo
Soldering and brazing all take place at temperatures significantly lower than the melting point of the base metal. So by definition pure iron or steel could not be used as solder on steel.
Sn43Pb43Bi14 paste solder, according to Kester's chart, melts at between 291f to 324f, so it would have minimal effect on the blade temper, if the steel is heated barely to the melting point of that solder. Sn62Pb36Ag2 melts at 354f, which is getting up into the danger zone but careful work ought to leave you with a usable temper in the steel. Sn63Pb37 is a common alloy with a melting point of 361f. Both of those alloys are available as wire or as paste. Common 60/40 solder melts at between 361 and 374 degrees. Most other well known solders melt at 400f or higher and so no matter how careful you are, you would be pushing the temper with any razor steel that I am familiar with.
Keep in mind though, that a razor doesn't have to be a perfect 61HRC to shave. You could push it to about 56HRC and still have a useful razor. The temperature for a particular hardness of course varies with the steel alloy and the post-quench hardness. So apparently my formerly held opinion that trying to solder a razor would result in a useless piece of junk is not necessarily accurate.
The extent of damage in your razor would not encourage me to even try to solder it, nonetheless. But as an academic exercise, it might be interesting to try. I don't think you will master a technique with just one razor, though.
Cant argue much with your fair point. I might take up the challenge and let you guys know how it goes.Quote:
Originally Posted by CrescentCityRazors
Thanks again for your detailed input.
The thinner the grind the less chance of it working
It really is that simple, A heavy 1/4 hollow will dissipate the heat better and also not flex when stropping as much..
What you have is akin to a "Compound Fracture" :) Try it see what happens
To be honest the time spent trying to fix that would be better spent looking for a Bengall that can be made to shave.
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The pieces are out of alignment, is that because they are under tension and binding or bent?
Either way, that may be an issue trying to get them realigned without causing further cracking. Even if you were to get the parts aligned, and brazed or soldered, I believe you would still have an edge issue.
But, you have nothing to lose by trying. Watch your heat, the thin edge will heat quickly as opposed to the belly.
Do post your results, Good Luck.
The distortion Euclid sees (me too) suggests that this blade is under some internal stress. That potentiates cracks like this developing in the first place. Heating this blade is going to inject additional stress that could cause more movement of the material and worsen the cracking. Heat treatment, because of the change in the carbide crystals induces tension into the steel. On a larger scale, the heat treatment of a Japanese sword for example, the blade goes into the water straight and comes out with that desirable curve in it. On a smaller scale, say this razor, that tension in the steel is still there but over a much shorter distance. Not all "bellied" razors were ground that way deliberately. I suspect many a happy accident during the heat treatment helped that feature along.
The vertical crack is through the hardened portion of the blade. The horizontal crack is most likely the zone between hard martensite and less hard pearlite or other formations on this blade.
If this was an historical piece and valuable as a display you might consider filling the defect to stabliize it but not to shave with. Museums do this all the time.
As a smith, the razor is toast. The blade is too thin to try any kind of higher temperature fix, the lower temperature solders are right at the cusp of the tempering range for these old steels. As a grinder you will have to remove all the fractured material and you're left with a half inch razor.
For the money and time you will spend learning, it's completely subjective how much value you will gain versus the loss of this blade.
This is not to discourage learning. If you try to solder it, You have to consider that heat is moving into areas around the crack you do not want heat to get into. Get a tube of Heat Fence or the like. It will save the parts of the blade that heat could damage before you can remove your hand-soldering iron to stop it.
There are plenty more razors to find in much better shape.
This is probably a stupid question and I am going to get my bum flamed, and I am not a boilermaker, but couldn't you weld the crack in this Bengall. Yeah I realise that if you connected an electrode to one end and one touch with the welding rod would probably dissolve the whole thing, but isn't there other methods you could use?
cheers
:overkill:.....
If you take the razor over the max temper temperature for the desired hardness, you will be making the razor softer. The steel is too thin to reharden, which (to not get too geeky here) involves heating the steel above a transformation point, then quenching, which is rapid cooling that results in a different crystal structure in the steel. Just to give you an idea of how hot the steel must be heated, a magnet no longer even sticks to the steel when it is that hot. Typical temps depending on the alloy are 1450f to 1600f. The rapid cooling of the quench is very stressful, and very thin steel does not survive. It will warp, crack, even shatter. A razor early in it's manufacture is capable of withstanding and benefiting from this heat treatment. Once final grinding has been performed, it is too thin.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mouette
The hardened steel then must be tempered, to restore some of its resiliency and toughness. Hardness alone does not make a good razor. Fresh from heat treating, the razor is prone to cracking and chipping. Tempering consists of taking the steel up to a temperature typically for razors between 350f and 400f, some steels at lower or higher temps. If you overheat the steel, you push the temper into a softer range.
Welding of course brings steel local to the weld up to the melting point, considerably above tempering temperature, even higher than critical temp for heat treating. Once done, to a finished razor, the process cannot be reversed or repeated to good result. To weld a crack on a razor would also heat the entire blade above temper. And you would want a VERY tiny electrode LOL! If you maintained cooling at the edge, the temperature differential would probably shatter the razor. Some sort of spot welding technique using a capacitive or inductive discharge might work in a controllable manner and minimize blade heating but enough? I am thinking not. Of course, you could try. You could investigate this yourself if you are up to learning a lot of stuff and doing a lot of experimentation. I don't believe anyone else has done this successfully.
So, the only other metallic bonding involving melting and flowing that seems to have a chance of success would be low temperature soldering. For the most part, though, we just don't bother. There are other razors more worthy of effort, and requiring less of it.
