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Razors
- Thread starter jdm61
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2014
- Messages
- 95
Best thing you can do is get your hands on some old vintage razors. Sheffield or solingen would be good. Study the geometry of them and how they are ground.
Note the spine width in relationship to the width of the razor. This seems to be the biggest issue I see is people making razor shaped knives, rather than straight razors. Shoot for a width of the razor 3.5-4x the width of the spine to ensure a proper bevel angle when honing. Razors are honed with the spine resting on the stone (I use a layer of electrical tape over the spine to prevent hone wear there and it adds a negligible amount to the width).
In general a 1" wide razor (0.25" stock) ground with an 8 inch contact wheel will result in a 1/4 hollow grind. To go hollower you need smaller wheels.
I take the edges of mine down to 0.003" before sharpening. Keeping it even and center on both sides is the hardest part. Generally I set a coarse bevel while there is some meat on the edge (say at 0.010") and use the hone wear on the edge to guide my grinding to completion to ensure an even width bevel along the whole edge.
I believe Charlie Lewis had a youtube video of a straight razor from start to finish that is worth watching.
Hope that helps!
Note the spine width in relationship to the width of the razor. This seems to be the biggest issue I see is people making razor shaped knives, rather than straight razors. Shoot for a width of the razor 3.5-4x the width of the spine to ensure a proper bevel angle when honing. Razors are honed with the spine resting on the stone (I use a layer of electrical tape over the spine to prevent hone wear there and it adds a negligible amount to the width).
In general a 1" wide razor (0.25" stock) ground with an 8 inch contact wheel will result in a 1/4 hollow grind. To go hollower you need smaller wheels.
I take the edges of mine down to 0.003" before sharpening. Keeping it even and center on both sides is the hardest part. Generally I set a coarse bevel while there is some meat on the edge (say at 0.010") and use the hone wear on the edge to guide my grinding to completion to ensure an even width bevel along the whole edge.
I believe Charlie Lewis had a youtube video of a straight razor from start to finish that is worth watching.
Hope that helps!
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2013
- Messages
- 2,694
I was about to suggest Lewis razors as well. Great source of info