Thread: Holy cow, my Kinfolks is magnetized!

Here is a tool that will demagnitize small items such as the blade on a straight razor. A friend of mine used one for tattoo machine parts and it worked.

Glenn is right about some of the vintage ones being marketed as magnetic - I have a Solingen Echt "magnetstahle" one. I've also read some old advertising that claimed the magnetism was a conditioning mechanism for the skin.

Simply working on the blade by moving it (or by moving upon it) in the same direction whilst lightly jarring it (eg hand-sanding) could produce a magnetic field if the the alignment of the blade was to magnetic north. There is a paragraph in Herman Melvilles superb book "Moby Dick" where Ahab magnetizes a steel bar by pointing it at magnetic north and hitting the end with a hammer.

The direction the blade cooled in when it came out of the forge could also play a part - the atoms go into alignment more easily then. Remains of ancient smelting-fires have been used to chart the way magnetic north has moved over the centuries.

It's a very interesting question, for sure!

Regards,
Neil.