Straight razors quickly become blunt, the steel is too soft, where is the manufacturing defect?
It should be in the heat treatment, the question is, what went wrong?
Here is an overview:
Occurs to me:
* Not long enough in the lead.
* Immersed in quenching oil too slowly, or oil too hot.
* Coolant failed during grinding.
* Overheated during grinding. Rather unlikely.
* Wrong steel, very unlikely.
I'm not a knife maker and I don't know which steps are the most critical, maybe someone here knows about metallurgy and knife making and can enlighten me.
How did I come up with this? I bought cheap straight razors from Amazon, it says "Best Brand". I manage to get them very sharp, but after a few strokes the sharpness wears off immediately and at the end of the shave the knife is so blunt that I can no longer shave. Compared to an old Solingen, I can shave for over 2 months. If I look at the blade with a magnifying glass, it looks like a mountain range, chipped away. I had something like that with an old Solingen knife, so there could have been a mistake in production. How do I know that the steel was too soft? Quite simply, I can scrape the soft steel with other straight razors with harder steel, sharp edge on edge. I also noticed that a burr tends to form when grinding softer steel, could that be? I also conclude that the harder the steel, the longer the service life.
With my method, razor sharpening is no problem, takes about 5-10 minutes from raw to ready to shave and I got the equipment for a few bucks. Consists of diamond grinding plates and old leather belts glued to wood and coated with wax-bound polishing paste. Just figuring out how to put the tool together took a very long time, also to aquire the experience needed. Take diamond plates grits are 2500 and 1500 as well as 6 different grinding pastes and also blank leather for finish. Leather can be very different, it can be coarser than the coarsest grinding paste, but also finer than the finest grinding paste, you have to try the leathers out. And the cutting edge is not as straight as with whetstones, i.e. you don't have to be careful that you wear away evenly at the front and back. I think whetstones are the worst method of sharpening.
Straight razors have become indispensable for me, shaving works better than anything else, whether it's a dry razor or something else. No tugging, no razor burn, no stinging whiskers, inexpensive.
Bottom and especially the middle one are for final stropping, top one is very coarse, coarser than the coarsest buffing compound. That surprised me and it took me a long time to figure it out.
It should be in the heat treatment, the question is, what went wrong?
Here is an overview:
Occurs to me:
* Not long enough in the lead.
* Immersed in quenching oil too slowly, or oil too hot.
* Coolant failed during grinding.
* Overheated during grinding. Rather unlikely.
* Wrong steel, very unlikely.
I'm not a knife maker and I don't know which steps are the most critical, maybe someone here knows about metallurgy and knife making and can enlighten me.
How did I come up with this? I bought cheap straight razors from Amazon, it says "Best Brand". I manage to get them very sharp, but after a few strokes the sharpness wears off immediately and at the end of the shave the knife is so blunt that I can no longer shave. Compared to an old Solingen, I can shave for over 2 months. If I look at the blade with a magnifying glass, it looks like a mountain range, chipped away. I had something like that with an old Solingen knife, so there could have been a mistake in production. How do I know that the steel was too soft? Quite simply, I can scrape the soft steel with other straight razors with harder steel, sharp edge on edge. I also noticed that a burr tends to form when grinding softer steel, could that be? I also conclude that the harder the steel, the longer the service life.
With my method, razor sharpening is no problem, takes about 5-10 minutes from raw to ready to shave and I got the equipment for a few bucks. Consists of diamond grinding plates and old leather belts glued to wood and coated with wax-bound polishing paste. Just figuring out how to put the tool together took a very long time, also to aquire the experience needed. Take diamond plates grits are 2500 and 1500 as well as 6 different grinding pastes and also blank leather for finish. Leather can be very different, it can be coarser than the coarsest grinding paste, but also finer than the finest grinding paste, you have to try the leathers out. And the cutting edge is not as straight as with whetstones, i.e. you don't have to be careful that you wear away evenly at the front and back. I think whetstones are the worst method of sharpening.
Straight razors have become indispensable for me, shaving works better than anything else, whether it's a dry razor or something else. No tugging, no razor burn, no stinging whiskers, inexpensive.
Bottom and especially the middle one are for final stropping, top one is very coarse, coarser than the coarsest buffing compound. That surprised me and it took me a long time to figure it out.
