I've had this razor for a while, bought it when i was trying to collect razors with labels from places that meant something to me - i grew up near detroit, where this razor's label says its from (yeah its not in the picture, i forgot to get one of the back).
The back scale was broken so new scales would be needed but i liked the logo on the scale and at the time i didnt know how i was going to reproduce it. a few years, a move of several hundred miles, and several new hobbies later, i had a plan. I bought a "K40 laser cutter" - a cheap chinese 40 watt CO2 laser - at the start of summer and have been having fun learning how to use it when i came across a baggie full of old project razors in my workshop, including this one.
I took the above picture and imported it into inkscape. i measured the distance between the pins to adjust the size of the picture and i used the "bezier pen" to outline the scales, the pin locations, and then to outline the logo, creating a file that looked like this:
in the laser cutter software, red will be cut and black etched. unfortunately i got a little excited when doing it so i neglected to take any pictures but the logo etched nicely into the black acrylic and the outline cut out nicely. weirdly the pin locations etched rather than being cut, something i did wrong in inkscape i think, but at least i could easily see where to drill. i filled the logo with some acrylic paint and then went to shaping the scales a bit. this didnt go perfectly and i tried a few different things to polish the edges, including flame polishing which mostly just made them try to warp. i gave up and sprayed with some clear lacquer (and then forgot to protect from dust -- oops. feel free to learn from my mistakes). in the meantime i cleaned up the blade a bit with a scotchbrite belt on a 1x30 belt sander from HF with a bucket of water for frequent cooling dips. then i polished it with MAAS. not a mirror shine but i liked the result. pinned it together using the original inner washers, middle pin spacer, and "wedge" (actually a spacer, not wedge shaped). honed it on a superstone 3000/8000 (bevel was pretty close so the 3000 didnt take too long to set it - used the "burr method") and finished on a pretty pink-tinged coti with some milky slurry. fantastic shave this morning. makes me think its about time to rehone most of the rest of my razor rotation. here's the final result:
The back scale was broken so new scales would be needed but i liked the logo on the scale and at the time i didnt know how i was going to reproduce it. a few years, a move of several hundred miles, and several new hobbies later, i had a plan. I bought a "K40 laser cutter" - a cheap chinese 40 watt CO2 laser - at the start of summer and have been having fun learning how to use it when i came across a baggie full of old project razors in my workshop, including this one.
I took the above picture and imported it into inkscape. i measured the distance between the pins to adjust the size of the picture and i used the "bezier pen" to outline the scales, the pin locations, and then to outline the logo, creating a file that looked like this:
in the laser cutter software, red will be cut and black etched. unfortunately i got a little excited when doing it so i neglected to take any pictures but the logo etched nicely into the black acrylic and the outline cut out nicely. weirdly the pin locations etched rather than being cut, something i did wrong in inkscape i think, but at least i could easily see where to drill. i filled the logo with some acrylic paint and then went to shaping the scales a bit. this didnt go perfectly and i tried a few different things to polish the edges, including flame polishing which mostly just made them try to warp. i gave up and sprayed with some clear lacquer (and then forgot to protect from dust -- oops. feel free to learn from my mistakes). in the meantime i cleaned up the blade a bit with a scotchbrite belt on a 1x30 belt sander from HF with a bucket of water for frequent cooling dips. then i polished it with MAAS. not a mirror shine but i liked the result. pinned it together using the original inner washers, middle pin spacer, and "wedge" (actually a spacer, not wedge shaped). honed it on a superstone 3000/8000 (bevel was pretty close so the 3000 didnt take too long to set it - used the "burr method") and finished on a pretty pink-tinged coti with some milky slurry. fantastic shave this morning. makes me think its about time to rehone most of the rest of my razor rotation. here's the final result:
