Parting Tool Razor

Just wondering, you who are familiar with lathes and the tooling used on them. Anybody ever make or consider making a straight razor blade out of a High Speed Steel/Cobalt parting tool. I'm wondering about the feasibility of this.

Suppose you could, I don't think it would work well, but it would be a fun way to kill a Sat afternoon. My HSS skews sharpen up and clean the hairs off my arm quite nicely.

Occurs to me that I should show a pic of a parting tool for those who are not machinists.



This particular parting tool is 4-3/4 long, 11/16 tall and 1/8 wide. Rockwell hardness is likely around 70C +/-.

Here's the wood lathe parting tool I was thinking of, same thing, but a little wider and is already handled. Think the handle would have to go...

Might want to mute the tip a bit on that one . . . .

Yikes!

Fuzzy, the cutting and grinding of that would definitely present a challenge. Were you thinking of pulling the temper out of it, then cutting grinding and re-hardening or leaving it hardened?

With a thickness of 1/8". It wouldn't be thick enough to make a complete razor, maybe a frameback.
Honestly if you want to try your hand at making a razor, I would suggest pick up some1/4" thick 1080 high carbon steel and go from there.
It's cheap and straight forward to heat treat.

Brianskeet said:

Fuzzy, the cutting and grinding of that would definitely present a challenge. Were you thinking of pulling the temper out of it, then cutting grinding and re-hardening or leaving it hardened?

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Wouldn't be worth doing if you annealed it then tried to heat treat it again to bring back hardness. It's high speed steel, not O1. You'd never get satisfactory hardness back after the anneal. Also, I don't think it would respond to pack carborizing like a medium to low carbon steel.

It would be a long drawn out grinding process. The kind of job that you do a little each day for a couple of weeks, so you don't get bored and careless and make a mistake or hurt yourself.

I wouldn't go full hollow on it, as the higher hardness also means more brittle.

MileMarker60 said:

With a thickness of 1/8". It wouldn't be thick enough to make a complete razor, maybe a frameback.
Honestly if you want to try your hand at making a razor, I would suggest pick up some1/4" thick 1080 high carbon steel and go from there.
It's cheap and straight forward to heat treat.

Click to expand...

About the same thickness as a DOVO 5/8".

1080 would be a good choice if you're forging your own. Not having room for forge, anvil and all the ancillary tooling, I think I'd start with flat ground stock in O-1, W-1 or A-2 and just saw and sand the basic shape, heat treat, then grind.

fuzzymuzzle said:

Wouldn't be worth doing if you annealed it then tried to heat treat it again to bring back hardness. It's high speed steel, not O1. You'd never get satisfactory hardness back after the anneal. Also, I don't think it would respond to pack carborizing like a medium to low carbon steel.

It would be a long drawn out grinding process. The kind of job that you do a little each day for a couple of weeks, so you don't get bored and careless and make a mistake or hurt yourself.

I wouldn't go full hollow on it, as the higher hardness also means more brittle.

Click to expand...

Would definitely be cool to see the honing and edge retaining properties.

fuzzymuzzle said:

About the same thickness as a DOVO 5/8".

1080 would be a good choice if you're forging your own. Not having room for forge, anvil and all the ancillary tooling, I think I'd start with flat ground stock in O-1, W-1 or A-2 and just saw and sand the basic shape, heat treat, then grind.

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I'm pretty sure there aren't any dovo's that have a 1/8" thick spine (that doesn't have a ton of wear). Most would be around .18-.20 vs. 1/8 (.125)
1080 comes in flat stock as well.

MileMarker60, you're absolutely right and I stand corrected. Just miked my DOVO Diamant and it comes out to .177. I eyeballed it last night against one of the kid's school rulers.

Can always start with a 3/16 parting tool. I have parting tools from 1/16 to 1/4 by 16ths.

3/16 would be the choice for 5/8.
On a side note.. 70hrc is hard.. Harder then any stock razor.
I think your going to have a problem with micro chipping at the edge. Could be alot of work for nothing.

"Could be alot of work for nothing." indeed!
Your comments are what I was looking for in this thread. I have a bit of knowledge about metals, heat treating, HSS, HSS/Cobalt, Stellite, Carbides, ceramics and the like, but when it comes to wet shaving and the finer points and particulars of straight razors, I'm still "wet behind the ears".

HRC 70, killer wear resistance.

Setting a bevel on that would be interesting.

I don't think it'll support a 17˚ bevel though....

Just an idea to throw into the mix. Thin sheet steel bent into a U shaped channel to accept the Cobalt. Thickness determined by the blade width and final bevel angle you want. I don't figure drilling and pinning to be pleasant with that stuff, so maybe just simple epoxy to hold the "frameback" on. You could make a very one off custom sort of frameback. Something in the way of scales that would honor and harken to your years as a machinist. Leave the math a little fat. Just a degree or so to give that brittle stuff a chance to not microchip. Sounds like it could be real winner of a cold weather project!

Had thought of making a frameback with the parting tool blade, but more as a method of attaching the blade to a tang.

I'm just throwing out ideas. I usually use winter to do a few indoor projects.

MileMarker60 said:

With a thickness of 1/8". It wouldn't be thick enough to make a complete razor, maybe a frameback.
Honestly if you want to try your hand at making a razor, I would suggest pick up some1/4" thick 1080 high carbon steel and go from there.
It's cheap and straight forward to heat treat.

Click to expand...

Idunno... Could try it at 4/8. Or as a 9/16 or 5/8 full wedge, finished with electrical tape, It would be an interesting steel to try, but agree with MileMarker, a more standard razor steel like 1080, O1, etc would have a better chance of working out well. plus you could start with 1/4" or 3/16" and have a proper bevel angle in a nice 6/8 or so. 1/8" thick stock is not really quite thick enough for even a 4/8, tbh. So even a 4/8 is sort of pushing it, with 1/8" steel.

I would like to see microscope pics of the edge on a razor made out of this steel.

If it's M42, I think it'll chip to hell at razor bevel angles.