Thread: Tips on jimping

Hey guys,

Can anyone point me in the direction of some good jimping step-throughs or any tips in general? I have a couple blades (straight and fixed) I wouldn't mind adding some more decorative jimping on the spine.

Bests,

Samuel

Dremmel with metal cutting disks?

Tough to do on a hardened blade

As Pixelfixed said, on a hardened blade you can't do much but do what Wintchase said.

If you are making a razor and it has not been heat treated then you can use whatever you want from a file that cuts them perfectly (available through Brownells) like the checkering on a gun, a round or tri-angle file, dremel, heck, even stiple it with a pointed chisel. Once it has been heat treated though, the razor is as hard or harder than the files...so you are stuck with a cutting disc on a dremel.

Okay, I'll keep this in mind. I was thinking maybe a dremel with a diamond tipped bit. Thanks for the heads up everyone.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Tough to do on a hardened blade

I was thinking maybe if I heated up the spine on a hard buffing wheel, or maybe took a bit of the spine off with a grinding wheel, then I could localize the de-tempering and make the work a little easier.

Originally Posted by Samuel

Okay, I'll keep this in mind. I was thinking maybe a dremel with a diamond tipped bit. Thanks for the heads up everyone.

If you're going that route be sure the razor is as secure as possible in a vise. It's a dangerous mission with a dremel cut-off wheel or any other dremel tool.

With vintage razors it's a hit and miss. I've had vintage razors where it was easy to add jimps and others where my files would just skate over the steel. It all depends the heat treat the razor was given and if the tang was hardened or not.

Either way, be safe.

Did anybody tried high presure water cuter?

Originally Posted by adrspach

Did anybody tried high presure water cuter?

Have made one pce Ivory scales using a water jet machine in a friends machine shop.
Pretty pricy for a small job tho unless you know someone.

When I did it with a razor I made out of a hardened hand file I was lucky to have a surface grinder at my disposal & form ground the jimps with a super hard 220 wheel. Made it thru the entire progression without any wheel breakdown.
And that was some glass hard steel.