How to shim an AC razor?

[Eben Stone]

I want to create two shims for my RazoRock Hawk V3. I've had reasonably good results cutting a DE blade with regular scissors, but I have no idea what I should use to cut AC blades. Any suggestions?

 

[Rob72]

Yeesh, that's dicey. I would take a used blade, clamp it vertically in a bench vise and use a Dremel cut-off wheel to take the edge back to where the grind angle begins. Wear safety glasses...

 

[rudygu]

@Ron R has successfully done it by stoning the edge off. He posted about it somewhere, but I don’t recall what type of stone he used. If I were using a vise and dremel tool I think I’d opt to use a grinding bit instead of cut-off wheel.

 

[Ron R]

@Ron R has successfully done it by stoning the edge off. He posted about it somewhere, but I don’t recall what type of stone he used. If I were using a vise and dremel tool I think I’d opt to use a grinding bit instead of cut-off wheel.

This is all I did to make shims for a AC type razor for enlarging razor gaps and works well enough to experiment with. The craft knife is used to cut out slots covered by Scotch tape and the scotch tape also works well as a permanent shim on the new sharp blade(I marked B for "Bottom" on the new sharp blade when installing).
The spent blade is used also as a great shim, the shim has stoned groves cut into cutting edge to identify it from the sharp blade when placing and removing blades.( I have used diamond & stones for dulling the AC blade edge for handling reasons, (last thing we want is a cut!) I clamped with my fingers seemed to work great or use pliers.

Have some great shaves!

 

[Eben Stone]

This is all I did to make shims for a AC type razor for enlarging razor gaps and works well enough to experiment with. The craft knife is used to cut out slots covered by Scotch tape and the scotch tape also works well as a permanent shim on the new sharp blade(I marked B for "Bottom" on the new sharp blade when installing).
The spent blade is used also as a great shim, the shim has stoned groves cut into cutting edge to identify it from the sharp blade when placing and removing blades.( I have used diamond & stones for dulling the AC blade edge for handling reasons, (last thing we want is a cut!) I clamped with my fingers seemed to work great or use pliers.
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Have some great shaves!

Thanks Ron. I have a diamond stone I use to round off the stabilizer from straight razors. I'll try that.

 

[Eben Stone]

I've always thought the geometry of the RazoRock Hawk V3 was a little weird, like the top cap was too thin. So I wanted to try a shim. Initially, my goal was to put the shim between the cap and blade.

I successfully made two shims using a diamond stone to grind away the edge from two AC blades (thanks @Ron R).

For tonight's shave I ended up using both shims. I made a blade sandwich, as in: shim, blade, shim. From my limited understanding, this should have slightly decreased the blade exposure and increased the blade gap. It was a great shave. I think it was an improvement to what I've learned to expect without the shims.

This is going down in my books as a success.

Its not very convenient, and the posts of the RR Hawk V3 base only allow for a maximum of two shims. Ideally, I want to try a different razor that will allow me to mount the blades in backwards as shims so I can experiment with more than two shims.