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First mod attempt

I had a ZY430 that I had initially picked up for honing practice but hasn't seen a stone in a while, so I decided to try my hand at doing some mod work. I did take a couple of pics along the way, but didn't document it nearly as much as I should have.

I made the mistake of doing most of the shaping before thinning the spine and the tip ticked on the belt sander as I was doing the thinning and took a chunk out of the toe at the edge, which meant that if I wanted to continue I would have to make it a shorty. Since I don't have a stockpile of GD's or ZY's(yet) I went the shorty route, and this was the result after thinning the spine
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And this is what happened when I wasn't paying attention and let the tang ride onto the belt sander lol.
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In an attempt to at least mitigate the obviousness of my stupidity I carved a thumbnotch and tried to curve the tang around it. I was mostly successful, but the face didn't(and still doesn't) quite match the back. My BIL had gifted me some tiger maple, black walnut, and purple heart recently, and I went with purple heart for the scales.

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After starting to set the initial bevel I realized that I had thinned the spine too much, so I had to reduce the width of the blade. I brought it down to a 5/8 and hoped that that would be enough. It took forever to set the bevel, but I chipped away at it here and there for a few days and finally got it to where I wanted it, then took it back to the belt sander to remove the massive hone wear lol.

After I finished on the belt sander it was time for the final shaping. I pulled out the dremel and did that, then took the deeper scratches out of it with sanding drums. Once that was done I grabbed some wet/dry sandpaper and did the rest by hand.

During all of the work on the blade I was coating the scales with tung oil every day or two. Once I had 6 coats on I let it sit for a couple more days, then finished them with Ren Wax. Final results to follow.
 
Once I finished the the hand sanding I took it back to the dremel for final polishing. At this point I should have gone back a few grits to take some deeper scratches out, but I wasn't even sure if I could get this thing to shave, so I finished polishing it, then pinned the scales and took a break for a couple days before honing.

This is the final result(before honing). There are still scratches that need to be taken out, and I may get around to doing that eventually, but I'm pretty happy with it for a first attempt. Please excuse the poor pics.

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I finished honing it last night and got a surprisingly great shave from it today. I thought I'd post my results and get some constructive criticism from the folks here. Thanks for reading! :thumbup:
 

Slash McCoy

I freehand dog rockets
First time? I would say that is a most excellent first mod. Did you measure spine thickness and hypotenuse, and calculate the bevel angle? If you are gonna do it and then correct it, you should be going by the numbers.

I always leave final profiling, especially the nose, for near the finish. As I am sanding, when I get to the 1000 grit stage, I finish profiling. As you sand and thin the blade, the ends of the blade can get VERY thin, and so it is good for the excess thinning to occur on steel that is going to be profiled away, anyhow. I also do a preliminary rough bevel set early in the process, to keep the spine and edge aligned.

It came out looking nice, yeah. Your eye for design is similar to mine, so I like it a lot. Glad it is shaving well for you. I figured those razors would be great for modding, and I had two of them I was going to do but I am always busy doing GDs, and I ended up selling the pair. So I am especially glad to see someone exploring the potential of the ZY.

If you do another one, I suggest calculating and setting a target spine thickness, and initially taking it down to about .005 thicker, because finishing will remove that much, and initial honing. Don't overthin. Try to keep as much width on the blade as possible. I think it would make for a most excellent razor.

Myself, I am liking bevel angles of around 16.5°. Under 16° and it just starts to get a little too touchy. Over 17° and it is a little mild for my taste but just right for some folks. The stock ZY is a hair over 20° and the stock GD66 is almost 19°, for reference.
 
First time? I would say that is a most excellent first mod. Did you measure spine thickness and hypotenuse, and calculate the bevel angle? If you are gonna do it and then correct it, you should be going by the numbers.

I always leave final profiling, especially the nose, for near the finish. As I am sanding, when I get to the 1000 grit stage, I finish profiling. As you sand and thin the blade, the ends of the blade can get VERY thin, and so it is good for the excess thinning to occur on steel that is going to be profiled away, anyhow. I also do a preliminary rough bevel set early in the process, to keep the spine and edge aligned.

It came out looking nice, yeah. Your eye for design is similar to mine, so I like it a lot. Glad it is shaving well for you. I figured those razors would be great for modding, and I had two of them I was going to do but I am always busy doing GDs, and I ended up selling the pair. So I am especially glad to see someone exploring the potential of the ZY.

If you do another one, I suggest calculating and setting a target spine thickness, and initially taking it down to about .005 thicker, because finishing will remove that much, and initial honing. Don't overthin. Try to keep as much width on the blade as possible. I think it would make for a most excellent razor.

Myself, I am liking bevel angles of around 16.5°. Under 16° and it just starts to get a little too touchy. Over 17° and it is a little mild for my taste but just right for some folks. The stock ZY is a hair over 20° and the stock GD66 is almost 19°, for reference.

Thanks Slash, and thanks for the advice! I did read some of your posts to get as far as I did and they were very helpful. I forgot a few things here and there while I was working on it, but I figured that if I screwed something up it would stick in my mind better, and it was a great learning experience. I calculated the bevel angle, and it's a hair under 14°, so I did manage to overthin the spine lol. I'll be shooting for 16° on the next one, but will probably be picking up a few GD66's for the next round.
 

Slash McCoy

I freehand dog rockets
Thanks Slash, and thanks for the advice! I did read some of your posts to get as far as I did and they were very helpful. I forgot a few things here and there while I was working on it, but I figured that if I screwed something up it would stick in my mind better, and it was a great learning experience. I calculated the bevel angle, and it's a hair under 14°, so I did manage to overthin the spine lol. I'll be shooting for 16° on the next one, but will probably be picking up a few GD66's for the next round.


Wow... that's a very acute bevel angle. If it seems to shave harsh, or the edge does not seem to last long, you could try this... hone normally, your normal finish. Then tape the spine, and do 5 or 6 very light very VERY light laps on the finisher. This puts a tiny microbevel at closer to the sweetspot angle. You could even try two layers of tape, at that angle. If you go to extremely fine stones or film for finish honing, you may find the razor is extremely eager to cut. Skin, not just hair. And you need to keep your shave angle a little tighter, too, with very thin razors. If it is shaving just fine for you, then ignore the above.

Note that when you measure to calculate bevel angle, you do not measure the width of the blade. You measure the distance between the top of the spine bevel to the bottom of the edge, then that becomes the hypotenuse. Then half of the spine thickness becomes the Opposite side. Find the angle, and double it, for your bevel angle. Any other way is incorrect and will not give you the correct bevel angle. Looking at your razor, I can imagine that your under 14 degree result might indeed be accurate, but do review your method because it makes a difference.
 
Wow... that's a very acute bevel angle. If it seems to shave harsh, or the edge does not seem to last long, you could try this... hone normally, your normal finish. Then tape the spine, and do 5 or 6 very light very VERY light laps on the finisher. This puts a tiny microbevel at closer to the sweetspot angle. You could even try two layers of tape, at that angle. If you go to extremely fine stones or film for finish honing, you may find the razor is extremely eager to cut. Skin, not just hair. And you need to keep your shave angle a little tighter, too, with very thin razors. If it is shaving just fine for you, then ignore the above.

Note that when you measure to calculate bevel angle, you do not measure the width of the blade. You measure the distance between the top of the spine bevel to the bottom of the edge, then that becomes the hypotenuse. Then half of the spine thickness becomes the Opposite side. Find the angle, and double it, for your bevel angle. Any other way is incorrect and will not give you the correct bevel angle. Looking at your razor, I can imagine that your under 14 degree result might indeed be accurate, but do review your method because it makes a difference.

A couple people gave me the formula for calculating the bevel angle, and it matches up what you posted, so it is at least very close to that. I only have two shaves on it so far so I'm not sure how long the edge will last, but both shaves were surprisingly close and smooth, and I almost had the spine on my skin the entire time. If the edge start to go I'll use the tape, but the only difference I noticed between the first and second shaves was that the edge has smoothed out a bit.

Being pretty anal about exactness I will likely be double and triple checking the measurements and recalculating the bevel angle. If it is different I'll post the change as well. Thanks again for the advice. :thumbup:
 
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