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Koraat-Knives: Introduction

Koraat

Producer/ Dealer
Koraat-Knives is a small family company. Near the Wachau in lower Austria, at the Nibelungengau, we have our shop at the ground floor of our house. That´s where we produce our 100% handmade straight razors with the highest possible quality.
Beside my wife, Christine Weinberger, and me, Ulrik Beyer, we only have our two dogs to assist us. We have no employees. That´s why you as a customer, can rely on the fact that we stand up to 100% for any of our razors and that all razors go through our own hands.
Because our production quantities are rather small you can be sure to buy a very individual razor and no mass product.
I have a formation as goldsmith, but was always attracted by knifemaking. That´s why I have started my business as knifemaker in 2009. Soon I have realized that my passion are the finest and sharpest edges and I have specialized on highend custom kitchen knives. The next logical step was straight razor making and since 2013 I have stopped the production of all other cutlerys and am purely making straight razors.
Since 2015 my wife is working with me on our razors.


Our main product are customized, made to order straight razors, which can be ordered using our different straight razor configurators.
Beside that we also offer complete custom made unique pieces and some serial produced straight razor models.
We produce them in batches of 10-30 pieces and that helps to safe worktime resulting in lower prices. But the production quality is exactly the same as for our customized razors.
At the moment we offer razors based on two different base designs.
One is a design inspired by old sheffield blades, with a very thick spine and a pronounced thumbnotch. The second design is similar to the Solingen designs and is mainly based on the famous #14 blades, which have been used by many different companies in the past. The most famous being the Filarmonicas. Of course our blanks are not a „copy“ of these old blades. Like our sheffield design blanks and unlike the old #14 blades all of our 14 design blanks have a smiling edge, allowing a closer and smoother shave.
Beside the straight razors, we do also offer wet shaving equipement. We either buy quality products like shaving soaps and strops, or have them manufactured according to our design by specialized companys from Austria or Germany.
For example: Our shaving brushes are turned by a precision turning company in Austria according to a prototype I have made and we are doing the final finish and are mounting the knots.

The production of our straight razors consists of more than 100 working steps.

The first step is to create a prototype for our dropfroged bladeblanks. We first draw some designs on paper, and later we make some real prototypes from stock material. After intense testing we decide for the final design.
The final design is then implemented as a 3d model and this model is mill cut in a large die, which is used to dropfroge the blanks. These working steps are done by the last dropdforge in Solingen Germany, that is still specialized on straight razor forging.
The dropforging has two big benefits for the customer. First, and that is the most important, there is no better way than dropforging, to produce a razor blank in regard to quality. It results in a perfectly fine grained steel structure, which is the most important aspect for a good edge. The second benefit is the reproducibility. All blanks are identical in their dimensions and quality. You don´t need to worry about one blank being made of „good steel“, or being „well forged“ while others could be defective. All blades are forged from the same batch of high quality steel (either DIN 1.2210 (Silversteel) or DIN 1.3505 (Ballbearing steel depending on the blank type) and have all the same quality.
Unlike most other manufacturers, we never buy the standard assortment from the dropforge but have always our proper designs made. These are produced exclusively for us.
Further, we don´t buy hardened and prestamped blanks like most others. We obtain them soft, allowing us to make individual stamps and plenty of decorations and customizations that wouldn´t be possible using hardened blanks.
To guarantee a perfect hardening result, we do it on our own in a digital controlled hardening furnace. Followed by double tempering to a hardness of about 61-63hrc (depending of the steel)
We use DIN 1.2210/AISI L2 „Silversteel“ for our 7/8“ and 8/8“ sheffield design blanks and our 6/8“ and 7/8“ #14 design blanks.
The DIN 1.3505 /AISI 52100 is used for our 5/8“ and 6/8“ sheffield design blanks.
Further we also use DSC superclean damascus from Balbach in Germany, which is an inclusion free high quality damascus.
Ensuing a rough overview about the different workingsteps, but without listing all detailed steps:
-The blades are stamped using a handstamp and a hammer. The blank is then straightened and the tanghole is drilled.
-The outlines as well as the point and the rough spine decorations are ground with the beltgrinder. The thumbnotch and tang are ground.
-Further decorations are made with the file and the serrations are made.
-The hollow ground is roughly ground.
-The blade is hardened at a temperature above 800°C and is quenched in hot oil. Followed by double tempering at temperatures between 150°C and 200°C resulting in a hardness of 61-63hrc depending of the steelgrade.
-The blades get dark during hardening that´s why all grinding is redone after hardening with higher grits.
-The outlines and the tang are rough polished.
-The hollow grind is made. The blade is ground to an extremly thin edge.
-The outlines and the tang are fine polished.
-The hollow ground is finished. Either with a satin finish or a mirrorpolish.
-The blade is cleaned and is now ready for the pinning.
-Next step is the scalemaking, which is also done to 100% by us in our shop.
-The designtemplate is transfered on the scale material and the holes for the later pinning are drilled. Both scales are always worked together to ensure a perfect symmetrie.
-The outline and the profile are shaped by hand on the beltgrinder. We don´t use any CNC maschine, it´s all handwork.
-The scales are handsanded and then polished.
-The razor is pinned. The collars are produced by a sprecision turning company according to our design. The wedges are produced in our shop.
-The razor is sharpened and each razor must easily pass a hanging hair test from heel to point of the blade.

Some example photos:

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