R. Marchand Paris.

This is the second French razor and like the first I did it up a bit.
The first order of business was getting the blade squared away. The etch was missing part of the S, P and part of the H and the A was entirely gone. So I etched them back into place.
And since the spine was calling to me I decided to dress it up a bit. Why not ? So I did a rather delicate S pattern which over the length of the spine gets progressively smaller and the design creates a very long V as the pattern gets closer to the tail. Unlike most razors this entire spine, shaft and tail taper over its length. Cool!
Naturally the spine had to be polished prior to cutting in the design so the edges remain crisp. If it was polished after the edges would start to appear as if they're melted ice cubes and that just looks bad. Tiny as they are they came out fine .

For the scales I naturally went to Ivory to continue the set. Ultimately I'll have a 7 day set of carved Ivories. After these I'll carve MOP scales for something unique.
anyway , I sketched out a design and carved it as I did the last set and this was covered in that tutorial.
I also decided to inlay a piece of Paua shell. Man this stuff sparkles.!

Then I added some Scrimshaw to fill in around the shell. Sort of old school.

Nice work

A few more. And showing 4 of the 7. Now to pick some other blades . 2 French , 1 Japanese, 1 "Chinese". ( J.Elliot). I also will be designing/building /carving a nice box for them.

Stunning and inspiring work Mark!

That's really impressive work.

I believe you're missing part of the etch though.

''Supreme Trancha'' doesn't make sense in French. I googled it and found a razor like yours:



Means something like ''Supreme Sharpness''

Nothing short of breathtaking Mark!

beautiful work. love the scales on all of them. especially the first razor in the last picture. If only I had such skill.

Thanks guys. Sorry for the delay but I spent the afternoon with my granddaughter. She wanted a bowling party. Believe it or not it's something I've never done even at my advanced age! And this photo ,,, that's where she spent the entire afternoon. Made my day!

according to what I could find trancha (e) means to slice or cut off. Tranchant is sharp. Either way it's cool but wouldn't be an issue to add the NT. Still what I ended up with is better than UPREME TRANCH
But I think I'll leave it be for now and see if it does slice or cut off anything.!

mycarver said:

Thanks guys. Sorry for the delay but I spent the afternoon with my granddaughter. She wanted a bowling party. Believe it or not it's something I've never done even at my advanced age! And this photo ,,, that's where she spent the entire afternoon. Made my day!

according to what I could find trancha (e) means to slice or cut off. Tranchant is sharp. Either way it's cool but wouldn't be an issue to add the NT.
But I think I'll leave it be for now and see if it does slice or cut off anything.!

Click to expand...

Those razors are simply beautiful! As nice as they are though, this last picture is worth more than all of them put together!! Cheers!

Love that inlay in the scales Mark. Stunning work of art. Would an inlay of some sort work with MOP as well?

Sure it would. You can onlay most anything into anything. I've done brass, silver , Ivory, shell into wood, horn , bone etc. it'll work.

I believe "tranchant" refers to the edge in French. It's good to bring it up, relative to the original intent, and to know this, but I like how it has ended up here as "trancha." That's it's destiny! Beautiful work.

I'm curious about how you polished the blade, and forgive me if you've explained your method elsewhere. If a buffer wasn't used, what are you using in addition to blocks of wood and sandpaper? I've been thinking to give powdered silicon carbide a shot since I have some for lapping, with wood pieces and cotton swabs.

Gentlemen. I'm certainly no linguist. Whatever it says is fine with me. I build razors . If it says diddley I'm fine with that. I don't see that as an issue to me or an obstacle to deal with. How it looks , how it shaves and how I got it here is where my interest lays. I can add all the letters I want to have it say whatever I want. Even if it's all Greek to me.
And don't get me wrong. I use buffers for sure. But only when it calls for it.
its like laying a paint job on a car. You spray it. Sand it to remove imperfections and blemishes. THEN after all that is done you polish it.
A buffers job I believe is to put the final polish and bring out the luster while removing the final fine scratches left by sanding. Just consider its name ,,,,? Buffer!
It buffs. It's job isn't pit/ rust removal. If you use it for that the results are just bad.
Do you use a buffer to remove rust on a car? No you don't. Razors are no different . Neither is prepping wood , metal or anything else you're trying to remove imperfections on the way to a final shine.
Certainly it can make any piece of metal shiny,,,, but at what cost? The answer I believe is seeing the outcome some show. And if you can't see the difference then just use a buffer.

Your work speaks for itself.

For starters on the razors Mark, wow. Just wow. It never gets old seeing your work.

it's also very cool you posted a pic of bowling with your granddaughter. She's adorable and I hope you had fun.

Fun? Oh my yes. I was in my glory.

You just turned a sub $40 ebay blade into a piece of art worth hundreds... Scary and nice

If I may be so bold to call this "art" then consider this.
I regularly take $20.00 worth of wood and turn it into hundreds or thousands . A few blobs of paint and a canvas turns into what kind of $ ?
a simple pencil and piece of paper turns into a sketch worth what? I pretend this is my " canvas" so to speak and then play to do what I want.
Whats it worth? Who knows. It just make me happy. There is nothing so gratifying as creating something,,,, stand back and say " I did that" regardless how it may appear to others .

And like the quote I just read today by Van Gogh states,,,
" I poured my heart and soul into my work . But along the way I lost my mind"


LOL. Ain't it the truth.