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My homemade 8/8 smiley

This is cool, love to see people tinkering with bits and pieces.
I've been planning on doing just this since earlier this year - I've even got all the parts to build myself a backstand. Just need the time to build it and perfect my forging.
Good luck, I can't wait to see the finished product.
 
My plan is to bring this one up through the hollow grind and set a bevel on it.

Well, plans change don't they. I did do the hollow grind on one side and finished just as the 1/2"x12" sanding belt gave up. I only had one since I didn't know how my mounting system was going to work. I had ordered more three days before this happened, but they won't be here till Friday. I decided to stop work on this practice piece and start making the razor.

The 0-1 steel had arrived the day before, so I did the forging on it today. It was very different psychologically, knowing that I was working on the actual razor. My forging skills had improved a lot in doing the two practice runs. The main difference was spending some extra time at the finish really trying to get things inline, and burying the razor in wood ashes after the last heat to anneal it.

More later.
 
Here is the 0-1 steel after forging and annealing $R1-03390-0006.jpg

Here it is after trimming the toe and shoulder, grinding in the monkey tail, drilling the pivot hole, and changing the angle of the tang. I used an oxy acetylene torch to heat the tang near the shoulder.$R1-03390-0002 (2).jpg

Next I filled the sides of the blade with body filler. The body filler establishes a solid reference plain on both sides that help when trueing the spine, and gives a solid backing to run against the fence when doing the hollow grind. The other razor shaped object is the second practice piece.
$R1-03390-0001.jpg
Here is the fence set up and the neoprene drum that I mount the 1/2"x12" sanding belts on.$R1-03390-0011 (2).jpg

I calculate the table angle relative to the center of the wheel and use a series of shims between the razor and fence as a feed for each cut. I've got one side of the razor ground and re filled so that I can now grind the other side.
 
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Yesterday I ground the second side, cleaned up the razor with 80 grit and did the heat treatment.

The spirit of this project, to me, is to see what I can do without expensive slack belt grinders, heat treat ovens, and other dedicated tools.

With that in mind, my heat treat consisted of heating the razor in the forge and checking with a magnet for austenite (steel is non magnetic above critical temperature) going a little bit hotter and holding that temperature for ten minutes by color, then quenching in 125 deg. canola oil. I then sanded off the light scale and baked it in my kitchen oven at 350 F. for one hour. After the razor cooled I had a very light patina of light straw color. Perfect!

Today I have been polishing up through the grits and making scales. Things are really coming together and I plan on shaving with the razor on Thanksgiving, which I think is pretty cool.

Pictures coming as soon as I finish the roll of film.
 
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Well, I didn't finish yesterday. My wife even pushed dinner back an hour to give me more time. Here is a shot of the blade fresh from the grinding jig
$R1-03430-004A (2).jpg
After grinding both sides and cleaning up the grind marks the edge is about .04". This seems really thin when you are heating the blade to 1500 degrees, but it is a lot of material when you are setting the bevel! I don't know how much thinner I can get away with, but I will go thinner on the next one. Here it is after the heat treat and some polishing. I did as much finish work as I could while the razor was dead dull.
$R1-03430-010A.jpg

When you set a 16.5 degree bevel on a .04 thick edge the bevel ends up over 1/8" wide. May as well be honing a wedge! This was very time consuming. On the good side I got A LOT of practice with the rolling stroke I will be using for all of the honing on this razor. When the spine reached the proper shape for my16.5 Deg. angle, I continued with a taped spine. I made a mandrel to allow me to put my sanding drum in my drill press, so that I could turn it at 300 rpm. This worked very well for free hand removal of stock behind the edge as got closer to setting the bevel. At that slow speed I had no trouble with heat build up, and working this close to a finished edge I'm in no hurry. As I got to where the edge was joining I started doing this removal of stock behind the edge by hand in a magnetic sanding jig, using the bevel reveal to show me where to sand. Of course this stock removal is continuously being blended into the blade.

I may finish today. If working on razors has taught me anything, it is the value of patience.
 
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Well, here it is.
$R1-03444-013A.jpg$R1-03444-017A.jpg

I am still fine tuning the relief behind the bevel so I haven't shaved with it yet." Perfection is the enemy of the good."
 
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