Anyone made a bakers Lame ?

C

Cushing H.

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French and other breads are sliced across the top prior to baking, both for decoration and to allow the loaf to expand when it “pops” due to the heat of the oven. This is done with a tool called a Lame, which holds a bare double edged razor. It occors to me one could make a short (one inch or so) equivalent of a hollow ground straight razor to serve the same purpose.

has anyone here made such a thing?

if so, for straight razors, any thoughts on acceptable steels? Acceptable hardness range? What thickness stock to start with?
 
I have not but thought of doing it many times as I don't like the lame we have. If I were to make one I'd make a small pointy blade with a flat edge out of some 0.04 AEB-L ground thin.
 
The issue is you will have to regularly sharpen the tiny straight razor. That is why a commercial lame ( pronounced lahm) has a disposable razor.

The simple answer is to keep a sharp tipped knife handy :D
 
Same as Stacy - sharp tipped knife with a very narrow mico-bevel; I keep it sharp with a diamond rod - works great!
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
The issue is you will have to regularly sharpen the tiny straight razor. That is why a commercial lame ( pronounced lahm) has a disposable razor.

The simple answer is to keep a sharp tipped knife handy :D
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I guess I’m thinking about this differently than you folks. I have sharp tipped knives, but they get used for different purposes during every day cooking activities, but I don’t bake bread every day. Often I will reach for one of those “sharp tipped knives”, but it has dulled enough that even a ceramic rod does not really bring the edge back enough (for the thing to work right without pulling the dough and deflating it a little, it really does need to be razor sharp). I figured that if I made something dedicated (by its shape and concave grind) to the purpose, it would not be used for other stuff and thus dulled. Used every other week or so on three loaves, it should not dull that fast? I don’t have any problem with stropping it before use either...
 
Cushing H. said:
I guess I’m thinking about this differently than you folks. I have sharp tipped knives, but they get used for different purposes during every day cooking activities, but I don’t bake bread every day. Often I will reach for one of those “sharp tipped knives”, but it has dulled enough that even a ceramic rod does not really bring the edge back enough (for the thing to work right without pulling the dough and deflating it a little, it really does need to be razor sharp). I figured that if I made something dedicated (by its shape and concave grind) to the purpose, it would not be used for other stuff and thus dulled. Used every other week or so on three loaves, it should not dull that fast? I don’t have any problem with stropping it before use either...
Click to expand...

Would that work?

Yes almost definitely.

Would it be functionality better than a razor blade or having a sharp knife on hand?

Probably not.

Would it be worth the amount to of time it would take to make?

That completely depends on how much you value your time.
 
Let me try saying this a different way.

if you were to make a concave-bevel straight razor- is there a recommendation for type of steel and for thickness of base stock?

(all other comments aside - I just thought it would be an interesting thing to try)
 
This is how I would done that ................ but i will not do that ;)
Take piece of flat steel of choice
Bend it like on picture and HT ........bend it to match radius on one of contact wheels you have .
Then grind inner side like chisel on horizontal grinder with appropriate size wheel .Cut part for handle and
put some ironwood handle on it :)
oQgPHWC.png
 
Natlek said:
This is how I would done that ................ but i will not do that ;)
Take piece of flat steel of choice
Bend it like on picture and HT ........bend it to match radius on one of contact wheels you have .
Then grind inner side like chisel on horizontal grinder with appropriate size wheel .Cut part for handle and
put some ironwood handle on it :)
oQgPHWC.png
Click to expand...
I am not sure if the curvature is necessary. For some fancy decorations on round loaves it certainly would help ... but my needs are just long straight slashes on French loaves. Hence the straight razor analogy.
 
AEB-L comes to mind, since it's used to make razors in industry...
 
I'm picturing something like a short bladed Japanese style fix straight razor or just a kiridashi. Either way as others have said, still have to keep it sharp.
 
Cushing H. said:
Let me try saying this a different way.

if you were to make a concave-bevel straight razor- is there a recommendation for type of steel and for thickness of base stock?

(all other comments aside - I just thought it would be an interesting thing to try)
Click to expand...

Anything fine grained would probably work perfectly. AEB-L, 1070, 1084, 1095, 15n20, O1, W1, 52100 would all probably work fine. You need effectively no toughness or strength behind the edge, so i think any of the steels would work.

Id probably agree on the thickness, i think a thick spin with a strong concave grind like a straight razor would be vastly overkill. Maybe some .05 thick steel, pre hardened, ground down and given basically a zero edge bevel with some water stones and then stropped.
 
Greenberg Woods said:
think a thick spin with a strong concave grind like a straight razor would be vastly overkill. Maybe some .05 thick steel, pre hardened, ground down
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Quite likely. I was intrigued, however, with the sharpening process used for a straight razor (after I looked it up) .... actually using the spine to uniformly and repeatably set the very shallow angle at the edge to produce the razor. Very similar to how a yanagiba is sharpened.

The kiridashi idea is also a good one. I actually have some steel kicking around that would work well for that. These things would be so small and quick to grind I might just try both approaches....
 
I was randomly put in charge of baking at one of the restaurants I worked at for 6 months.

A kiridashi works well, but like Stacy said, I mainly just used a paring knife.
 
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