Worth keeping?

[skip]

So I was given this razor. It older and somewhat beat up and I have no clue what I have. Been shaving for years with DE's and SE's but never a straight but I'm now starting to get intrigued....so my question to those that know, is this worth keeping? and if so how would I go about getting it shave ready?

If its not worth keeping I'll be using the steel for my next pattern welded knife I make.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

It appears to be in good shape. There are several hobbyists on B&B who can restore and hone it for you.

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/forumdisplay.php/143-Hobbyist-Vendor-Classifieds

 

[totorlekiller]

The blade seems in good shape. Just a little clean up and it will be ready to hone.
Are the scales horn or plastic?

 

[Coaster88]

With a little care it will be in good shape

 

[Sando]

The toe looks like it's been altered but the key is the edge and it looks good from that pic. Clauss is a good name.
A little cleanup then hone job and I think you're good to go.

 

[buca3152]

Looks like it will hone up fine. Function before form!

 

[Slash McCoy]

It's not a show-er but it is a shaver. Get it honed and shave with it.

 

[skip]

Well that's good news and the scales are just plastic.

Just have to find someone to hone it and figure out extra what stuff I need to try this straight shaving thing out!

Thank you all.

 

[Alum of Potash]

Looks great!

Edit: if you're already making knives, you should have no problem making it shave-ready yourself. What sharpening stones do you already have? May be good to start out from there...

 

[tomjr]

nice blade

 

[Brianskeet]

That will hone up and shave just fine.

 

[skip]

Looks great!

Edit: if you're already making knives, you should have no problem making it shave-ready yourself. What sharpening stones do you already have? May be good to start out from there...

A lot lol down to 2k. Just never tried to put an edge on a razor before so I'm not sure of the angles. Any good how to's for it?

 

[Slash McCoy]

A lot lol down to 2k. Just never tried to put an edge on a razor before so I'm not sure of the angles. Any good how to's for it?

You are in luck. You don't have to even think about the angle. The razor does that for you automatically. Simply place the blade flat on the hone and you have the proper angle. In fact, the only possible angle. The spine is your angle guide. Just hone and NEVER pick the spine up off the hone. When you flip the blade, flip the edge outward and keep the spine on the hone. Simple pimple.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Since this is an unknown razor, but it has no apparent damage to the edge, (dings, chips, cracks, etc) start out by setting the bevel on a 1k hone or 15u to 12u lapping film. Here is the easy way to get it RIGHT... hone one side at a time. We call this half laps, or circle laps. Keep one side, fir instance the "show" side, on the hone and just go back and forth for maybe 50 laps with only very moderate pressure, like just the weight of your hand and no more. Now feel the edge. You are looking for a burr to appear on the opposite side to the one that was on the hone. The burr must be felt along the entire edge. You can actually see it but it is important to feel for it, so you know what you are looking for. The burr will be a tiny catch, like a hook, of displaced steel. Run your finger off the edge as if driving off a cliff. Feel both sides and there will be a subtle difference from one side to the other, because if the burr is there but very small, you may not know it for what it is. When you have raised the burr completely from end to end, with no gaps, hone that side, i.e. the second side, or the "back" side since we already did the "show" side of the blade. Go the same number of half laps. Now you should feel the burr on the "show" side. If the burr extends from end to end unbroken on the edge, you have raised the burr on both sides in turn. Now, hone the burr off. Lighten up on the pressure to just barely the weight of the blade and a finger. and do regular alternating laps. Stroke away from you, and at the end of the stone, stop and flip the edge outward and back to you, keeping the spine always on the hone. Stroke toward you, and at the near end, flip the edge outward and away from you, keeping the spine on the hone. Typically 40 laps will get rid of the burr. Go 30 or 40, then strop on linen or felt, then another dozen alternating laps on the 1k and your bevel is perfectly set with no question about it. Yes, you are wasting a micron or two of steel. That's okay because you should never have to do this again, ever. Test the razor by shaving arm hair. It should remove arm hair easily, with no pressure and no skipping. The edge should feel the same to a fingertip, on either side. The bevel IS the edge. The bevel is key. The bevel is ALL. Without a good bevel, there is no point in visiting finer hones because you don't have a bevel. No bevel, no edge. Period. Do not think to continue in the progression if you have not set and verified the bevel. From here on out, you are simply polishing the bevel. The "sharpening" has been done.

 

[Slash McCoy]

I forgot to mention, the 1k stone must be very flat. Much flatter than you can eyeball. The best way to lap the stone is to get a POLISHED MARBLE TILE, 12" x 12" and glue a sheet of sandpaper to it. 320 or 400 grit usually work. If the stone is visibly dished or humped, start out coarser, maybe 100 grit. Lightly spray the back with 3m or Loctite spray adhesive, and carefully apply it to the tile. You can also use a VERY HEAVY piece of glass, like from a glass coffee table top. Woodworking supplies have calibrated granite lapping plates that are even better for this and surprisingly inexpensive. Now you have your lapping plate set up. Draw a grid on the face of the stone. Work the face of the stone on the sandpaper until the grid is entirely gone. If you use coarse paper to start, go until only a trace of grid remains, and switch to 400 grit to finish. Obviously, if you are not rocking the stone, and the grid is gone, and you are not running the stone off the edge of the sandpaper, then the stone is flat, right? For a finer stone you might want to repeat on 1k grit sandpaper but for a 1k stone, 400 or 600 are good enough. The stone quickly smoothes out. The flatness is what is important. And NOWHERE is flatness more important than your bevel setter.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Now your progression. A typical synthetic stone progression is 1k bevel setter, 4k, 8k, and optional finisher at 12k or more. Each stone has one job and one job only... to totally eradicate the scratches left in the bevel by the previous stone, and leave its own finer scratches. COMPLETELY. Don't expect your 8k to remove 1k scratches that your 4k did not completely remove. It ain't gonna happen this week. A loupe or microscope is good for this but with a VERY BRIGHT LIGHT reflecting off the bevel, you should see the texture of the bevel surface. Also the standard sharpness tests will show an improvement when you get there. The tactile feedback is my favorite cue. When you max out a stone, you will feel a slight suction between razor and stone. When you feel this, go another 20 or so very light laps and test the edge. You should see a most definite improvement. A good 4k edge COULD shave your face, at the price of a degree of comfort. If there is any doubt that the new edge is the product of the 4k stone, simply "glass" the edge. Run the edge lightly over a beer bottle as if sawing into it. One pass is enough. Now test the edge on your arm. It should not shave hair without considerable pressure. If you now hone until it CAN shave arm hair and shave it well, then you have put a whole new edge on the razor with the 4k. It is a 4k edge and no doubt about it. Be warned that this can take quite a lot of honing, and it is not a good thing to do as a routine step, but it is a good learning tool.

Next is the 8k. Same as before, but DO NOT glass the edge. You now should be able to detect the suction effect. So when the bevel surface conforms perfectly to the finer surface of this stone, the suction should be readily apparent. It is much easier to feel at 8k and upward than at 4k. It may also feel like the razor is trying to slice a thin shaving of stone from the hone. When you detect this, lighten up so that there is only the pressure of the blade on the stone. No arm, hand, or finger's weight. Just the weight of the blade. Rinse the stone clean of all slurry and swarf for this step of the lightest pressure. Otherwise the slurry effect will limit the sharpness of the edge.

To totally max out the 8k, you can whip up some shaving lather and apply it to the CLEAN stone. The lather creates a buffer between razor and stone, lifting the steel slightly above the hone so that the abrasive points only barely contact the steel. This makes still shallower scratches, smoothing the bevel even more than the stone itself is physically capable of doing by itself. The trick here is to gradually reduce pressure so that the scratches are finer and finer and finer, shallower and shallower, until the steel doesn't even contact the stone at all any more. This may easily take 300 or 400 laps. The final laps aren't really doing anything at all. Every 40 or 50 laps, refresh the lather. This technique is what I call the Poor Man's 12k. It creates a final finish quite competitive to that given by a 12k finisher. This is not a good technique for a professional honer because it is time and labor intensive. For honing your one and only razor, it is better than investing in that 12k Naniwa SuperStone unless you just like to spend money.

At this point, if you pass the razor 1/4" above your forearm, it should treetop hairs, at least a few. I call this the FOFT, or Floating Over Forearm Test. Notice the maximum height at which it will lop off the hair tops, and how silently it cuts and how little it tugs or catches. The sharpest possible edge will not even make the hairs sigh with sorrow when they are whacked off at mid body. This is a near mythical level of sharpness and it is unlikely that you will get it from an 8k no matter how good you are, but notice it anyway. If it only catches and pops the odd hair, it is sharp but could possibly be improved. If you have to choke up and pass it at 1/8" or less above the skin, then you did something wrong, maybe even back at the 4k stage, so revisit the 4k and start again from there.

If you have a finisher, then you can skip the lather on the 8k and save it for the post finisher finish. Simply switch to the 12k just like you switched from 4k to 8k. Hone with only the lightest pressure, and watch for the suction. Any 12k stone will give you very good feedback when you have maxed it out. When you do, go a dozen of the lightest laps, and do the lather trick on the CLEAN stone. Now you are getting into an otherworldly level of sharpness, such that no knife you have ever honed can ever know. At the end of the lather stage, after reducing pressure gradually over maybe 300 laps until the steel doesn't even meet the stone any more, you have a better than professional quality edge. Strop and shave.

Speaking of stropping, I have taken to stropping between grits. I think it removes any trace of "fin edge". I might just be full of crap but I doubt that it can hurt anything.

Stropping is always done with the SPINE LEADING. But as in honing, you always flip the EDGE OUTWARD and keep the spine on the strop. Keep the strop pulled tight. Only use enough pressure to control the blade and feel a consistent pull of leather which is called the "Draw" of the strop. If you let the strop sag, or if you lift the spine from the strop, you will round the fragile edge. Keep it tight and flat. 50 laps is typical. You can strop on the linen side if you like and then the leather but I just go on the leather.

 

[Slash McCoy]

I don't rub my razors on rocks like a misguided caveman any more. No more of that Neolithic stuff for me. I hone on lapping film. So keep that in mind as you watch the videos in this link. But the idea of the burr method of setting the bevel, and the progression through the grits, is the same. http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...emo-on-youtube?highlight=youtube+lapping+film. I don't remember if I finished on lather or not but it is a moot point because I did finish on film over damp paper. I will do a lather on rock honing video one of these days.

 

[Alum of Potash]

A lot lol down to 2k. Just never tried to put an edge on a razor before so I'm not sure of the angles. Any good how to's for it?

Sorry, you'll have to be more specific here about the stones you have, and bear in mind that everyone's approach is different. Slash has provided a pretty thorough(!) outline and is quite correct when he says that with razors, the spine sits on the stone along with the edge and that's the only angle guide you really need here. A breeze compared to finding the angle of a knife with the spine suspended in air! I'm really not that interested in abrasive films, so basically, from my end, if the razor is in decent shape, as it seems to be, you are looking for a bevel setter (800-2k JIS), a mid range stone (3k to 6k JIS), and a finisher (8k to 13k JIS). If there are chips, as there may be on any razor passed down from the ages, a more aggressive stone may be called for to remove them prior to the bevel setter. (Normally, I use an Arkansas oil-stone sequence, which is another ball of wax, so I'm drawing from analogy here with the synth water-stones.)

Following the example of someone who showed me his method of razor honing, I rely on the arm-hair test and viewing the edge with a 20x achromatic loupe for the most part, ending with the hanging-hair test. Bevel-setting cuts arm-hair equally along the blade's edge, leading to freely severing isolated hairs near the end with ~8k. At this point, an HHT normally yields an intermittent result: violin severing, plucking, etc. Then ~30 laps on a ferox-pasted hanging strop (pastes being considered as "cheating" by some), followed by ~10 laps on matching unpasted leather brings the HHT to silent severing, in lieu of a higher finisher. Then 60 laps on fine leather and it's time for a shave.

The shave in itself is another matter, and that is perhaps why it may be best to send the razor out to someone with experience to make things "ready" for starters. That said, you may risk to wreck things with the first shave and not be able to appreciate the fine edge anyway; so in your case, as a seasoned knife maker/sharpener, it may be worthwhile to take the big gamble and hone it from the start yourself. Stropping is a serious challenge; its significance should not be underestimated.

Apart from this, I would encourage you to study the Wikis here on B&B, and beyond this, to seek out threads and posts from a member going by the alias of "Great White Shavealo." He hasn't posted in around two years, but he came from a culinary background involving knife-sharpening and picked up things pretty quickly. Far more quickly than I have, for instance. Maybe there will be some hints for you from his example.

 

[skip]

That was an amazing wealth of information. Thank you very much for taking the time to write it up. I have more then enough to attempt this on my own now.

As for what the stones are I can not remember of the top of my head and they are currently crated up as I am relocating my smithy and all the fun and joy that entails (moving literally tons of steel and iron, tools, forges....sigh. If you thoght moving houses was a pain in the ***).