Thread: Warped blade??

I've read the term warped blade a few times and never thought much about it. However, I recently obtained an EBY, Harlow and Co. Boston Mass. razor. Upon inspection (ebay special) The blade is slightly curved. To call it a "C" shape would be a gross exaggeration but it's as close of a description as I can come up with (camera on the blink). Is this fixable? or chunk it/display it??

Thanks,

Brock
NE Arkansas

As long as the warp isn't too extreme it's fixable. Actually you're not so much fixing the warp as you are learning to hone it as is.

Do a search on rolling x-stroke, that's what you want to hone a warped blade.

One of the best descriptions I've read is this; take your hone and try to hone on only a half inch or so on the side. You're trying to have only a small portion of the blade in contact with the hone at a given time.

Or, if you're using a single grit hone you can try to hone on the stones side. This naturally doesn't work with DMT's.

Either way don't fret, I'm sure you'll have that baby shaving in no time.

What causes the blade to warp? Is it unrelieved stress in the steel?, or some sort of mishap by a newbie?

To be honest I don't know what causes it to warp.

Though in all the blades I've honed, I've had to use a rolling x-stroke more often than not.

What causes the warp is debatable, but I believe this happens during the hardening stage if the heat treating process of the steel.
To put it simply… to harden the steel the blade must be heated until it glows red, it is then quenched in oil or water to cool it quickly. The steel will become very hard… However lets step back a bit… when steel (or any material) is heated it expands and becomes soft, and when it cools it contracts and becomes hard… so when the steel is quenched, sometimes one side is cooled faster then the other side, the side that cools faster, contracts first, and will become hard first, while the other side is still hot and relatively soft, when this happens the blade will change shape before the other side begins to contract… but it is too late, when the steel is cool and hard, the shape is set.

But you must understand that back in the old days a little bend (warp) in the blade may have gone unnoticed or considered normal… and if you think about it, these were considered common everyday items. It is only because today these items are now considered somewhat valuable antiques, we become concerned about aesthetics.