thinking about getting a straight razor. what more do i need for it?

I picked up a Morley 5/8 (clover brand) double hollow ground with black plastic (?) scales at the antique shop down the road for $15. It was shaving sharp but just barely. I polished the edge with my norton 8k and ran it on the back of a belt a few times and proceeded to impress my gf with how smooth the patch of skin was on my calf after a test pass. Lathered up with some drug store glycerin based shaving soap and a boar bristle brush and proceeded to shave. Previously i had been using a mach3 and some gel and was not only never pleased with how unclose my shaves were but that my skin is always very irritated afterwards and the pimples that form under my chin. I've only been using it for a week now but the pimples are going away and my skin feels completely normal (not irritated) after a shave. My gf is jealous of how close a shave i get. I havent cut myself yet but the razor does drag a little on stiff hair and could stand to be a bit sharper.

I ordered a split leather and felt combo strop with boron carbide and chromium oxide pastes. It should be very easy to maintain an ultra sharp edge with this combo.

As for the hardness of the blade and the removal of golf ball casings... The blade on my razor is so thin i can easily deform it using a finger nail on the edge, it springs back to flat when pressure is released. Whether this razor was hrc 40 or 60 cutting a hard plastic golf ball casing would surely destroy it either through tearing or chipping. That said this particular razor is harder than the made in china kitchen knives in the junk drawer but softer than a microtech socom elite in 154cm (hrc 59?) based on scratch testing.
 
M Wadel said:
hey sodak. i got a UF stone too. if you clean the stone and dry it, then clean your hands and very gentle pull your fingertips over the surface you can feel some particles sticking up. about 50-100 or so on each side. i shaved these off with a SM fine triangle rod (the flat side where the fish-hook groove is) and now my stone is much smoother. i dont know if theyre all like that but it could be worth looking into. i also rounded off the sharp corners with a medium rod. i feel the stone wound better for razors now.
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Thanks, I'll give it a try!

As a general comment, please make sure that you all only cut hair with your razors. I've accidentally put some pretty serious dents in my edges with my fingernails by being careless. They do sharpen out, though.
 
http://www.matweb.com/search/SpecificMaterial.asp?bassnum=NB6BH0 talonite.

just from looking at the chem composition i can only see the W as problematic (the carbides) when sharpening. would it be possible to "split the grains/carbides in half" when sharpening to get a very thin edge? or doesnt it it work like that at all? just thought

im more than a bit tempted to try making a razor out of talonite, mostly for fun and since i dont have any oven yet (and i dont really trust someone to do it for me, the way i want it, without sending stuff overseas that is)
 
It has been claimed by some that this is the case but no it doesn't work like that. How come for example you can't take a really knotty piece of wood and use it for fine carving. Yes the wood tools are harder than the knots however the forces between the knots and the cutting tools will be greater than the strength of the wood to the knots and thus they will tend to tear out. You need enough steel around the carbides to hold them in place, or cobalt as it were for Talonite.Talonite has large carbides the size of ATS-34, about 25 microns. It is also way softer than ATS-34 and thus there will be less edge stability because it will lose carbides faster plus it dents/rolls easier as well.

-Cliff
 
There are a number of resources available that explain how to build a heating furnace for tempering that cost under $50 in parts. I think the time and effort involved in shaping the razor in the first place would be much more significant an investment and a good steel would make it more worthwhile an endeavor. I'd be concerned with the quenching process though and take precautions to avoid cracking and deformation (warm oil quench maybe).
 
M Wadel said:
http://www.matweb.com/search/SpecificMaterial.asp?bassnum=NB6BH0 talonite.

just from looking at the chem composition i can only see the W as problematic (the carbides) when sharpening. would it be possible to "split the grains/carbides in half" when sharpening to get a very thin edge? or doesnt it it work like that at all? just thought

im more than a bit tempted to try making a razor out of talonite, mostly for fun and since i dont have any oven yet (and i dont really trust someone to do it for me, the way i want it, without sending stuff overseas that is)
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I don't know about splitting, but you can simply sharpen the primary carbides with the appropriate abrasive. This is the common misunderstanding: The carbide size does not directly determine the achieveable accuteness of the edge. You can get a 1 micron edge even if the carbides are 50 microns, otherwise you would D2 never to shave and that is clearly possible. You just have to understand, and that is what Roman Landes fights so viciously to make people understand, that the carbides have nothing to hold on can can easily fracture and break out under side loades: The edge lacks strength. However, this is a problem that is exaggerbated by thin geometries. An edge at 12 deg per side might be perfectly fine but if you reduce it to 6 deg the edge crumbles at the slightest pressures, given the same thickness behind the edge (numbers are just examplary).

So the carbide size is more limiting the minium edge geometry than achieveable accuteness. A steel with a large carbide fraction would be completely unsuiteable for a straight razor. At the extremely thin cross section of a straight razor a steel with high carbide fraction would crumble like drywall.

Edit: Ok, before anybody takes this literally, the drywall statement is of course exaggerated, but I wanted to paint the right picture.
 
There is an influence on initial sharpness as well due to carbide size/volume for much the same reasons. Even though an abrasive can cut the carbide, there isn't enough steel around the carbide to hold it in place under the influence of the action/reaction forces during the cutting. It would be like for example trying to hold a piece of hardwood while someone cut it with a bowie. If the wood was hard or large enough you would not have the strength in your hand to keep it in place even though the knife is perfectly capable of cutting it. Buck and Spyderco have also measured this using CATRA machines and shown for example that ATS-34 and especially 440C are behind VG-10. VG-10 is actually promoted for high carbide retention by the manufacturer through use of cobalt to solid strengthen the steel.

-Cliff
 
Yes, that is true, that is what I mean that the carbide size doesn't influence acuteness *directly*. I think most of us know from experience that some steels just take a better edge, usually the ones with a limited carbide volume. I simply wanted to counter-steer the notion that if the carbide size is 50 microns for example (D2), the acutest edge achieveable is not 50 microns but much below that.

The problem with the initial sharpness term is, that it is also dependent on geometry. This is why I used the term acuteness. You could in principle achieve a sub-micron edge at 90 deg included angle in which case the carbide size is probably no problem but initial sharpness is still very low.
 
Yes, the edge would only approach the carbide size in the limit there was no matrix. That is an interesting point in regards to stability and sharpness, the edge would have a higher initial sharpness at high angles (defining sharpness by the thickness of the apex) but a very low cutting ability. You can compensate for this by use of proper multi-beveling, cut the primary angle very low and thus minimize the extent of the actual edge bevel.

There are still issues with this though for the same reasons. It isn't like you could expect the primary edge grind ATS-34 to be stable at 0.001" thick for example, because the carbides are bigger than that so they would have a hihg probability of getting torn out in the honing plus there is little steel around them even if they were not. I think this is why my small Sebenza just collapsed on the plywood because I had the edge at about that level in thickness.

-Cliff
 
A cheap alternative for a straight razor is one of these hair-thinning razors with disposable blades. You buy single edge disposable blades for them. You can take the guard off and it is essentially a straigh razor minus the thick spine. Considering the price and life span of the edges there is no need to resharpen them.

hairchopper.jpg
 
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