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Stubborn Razor

I still don't know how to highlight someone's comment. Do you just cut and paste? Anyway, Torbs, I am in the same boat as you just much worse. I bought a LOT of e'bay razors--W/B, Henkels, Bokers and some American/Soligen. I am slowly honing and shaving with them and sorting them in different mugs. Of course, some of the ugliest are the best. At heart I am a minimalist but I went crazy after finding out there was another level of straight razor shaving. I would love to get down to twenty or so. If you have an old favorite you think will be one of mine I will give you a fair price. (Ask Phil about that). I think I will restore some in the future and offer them here and on line, I guess, but right now I seemed swamped with all the work. Wish I had taken it slower, but that never was my style. Cheers from SC.
 
DJKELLY said:
I still don't know how to highlight someone's comment. Do you just cut and paste? Anyway, Torbs, I am in the same boat as you just much worse. I bought a LOT of e'bay razors--W/B, Henkels, Bokers and some American/Soligen. I am slowly honing and shaving with them and sorting them in different mugs. Of course, some of the ugliest are the best. At heart I am a minimalist but I went crazy after finding out there was another level of straight razor shaving. I would love to get down to twenty or so. If you have an old favorite you think will be one of mine I will give you a fair price. (Ask Phil about that). I think I will restore some in the future and offer them here and on line, I guess, but right now I seemed swamped with all the work. Wish I had taken it slower, but that never was my style. Cheers from SC.
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Bottom right, light colored (white) 'quote balloon' with 3 horizontal lines inside; just to the left of the green 'plus sign'.
 
Arrrggghhh! It's back. That damn chip. It's only the one, but man it's a good one, and always in the same spot.
I wasn't all that enthused about the shave off this razor finished with pastes, so i thought I'd take it back to the stone, with a single layer of tape.

I was working a heavy slurry to remove the last little bit of the chip, and just as I was about to work a dilucot after about 3 refreshes, i could feel the chunk fall out. Checked under the scope, and sure enough.... there it was, bigger than ever! That bummed me out so much i put it away and went to bed.:mad:
At this point, I've decided to bead knife the bugger and see if I can't get to some sound steel.
 
It sounds like your steel is far too brittle to work as it should. Have you considered anealing it a bit? try 220 F. for 30 minutes in a home oven. You might want to remove the scales before you do this of course - and ultimately - it might not work - but if you are interested - give it a try...
 
Holy Shit!

The thought never occured to me.


220F? what about heating some oil to that temp... then I wouldn't have to remove it from the scales. That's just barely above boiling, would boiling water work (slightly below 100 deg C at my elevation or does it need to be 220F (104C))?


(I will admit i had a moment's panic when i saw 220... at first I instictivly saw deg. celcius.... hahaha )
 
220 F. translates to roughly 104 C. Boiling water will not do it - and I would advise against oil. Simply pre heat the oven for about 20 minutes, then place the blade in it and after 30 min. remove the blade and set it down on WOOD surface to cool back to room temp. Dont try to quench it or otherwise force the cooling process - just let time take it's course. And please remember that doing this runs the risk of totaling your blade.
 
hhhmmmm. while I'm usually ready to try just about anything once.... I'm not sure if I'm to the point of risking the entire blade just yet.... I'd rather have a tooth-pick shaver than a paper-weight:)

I worry that it may be a slight flaw in the steel (since it reappears at the same place every time), which I wouldn't think annealing would fix, would it? OTOH, if it was just general micro-chipping, I would be more inclined to think it was a general hardness issue, which would make annealing it a better risk. BWTH do I know.... It ain't made outa wood.


(madly working my google-fu)

Regards,
-Chris
 
Tcensor said:
220 F. translates to roughly 104 C. Boiling water will not do it - and I would advise against oil. Simply pre heat the oven for about 20 minutes, then place the blade in it and after 30 min. remove the blade and set it down on WOOD surface to cool back to room temp. Dont try to quench it or otherwise force the cooling process - just let time take it's course. And please remember that doing this runs the risk of totaling your blade.
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Tcensor - that seems like a very low temperature to anneal steel. I would have guess something greater than ~750°. Any idea what kind of changes you're expecting at ~104°C?
 
It is a very low temperature. While bringing hardened steel to a completely annealed state would require somewhere in the region of 750 F. for about 20 hours or so the idea here is not to completely anneal - but to NORMALIZE. that is to say, alleviate any internal tensions that are causing this chipping. This is best done at lower temperatures and for much shorter periods of time. If it 220 does not work, he can try 302 for 1 hour and this might do the trick - and if not, 482 for 1 1/2 hour. Either way, starting a too high a temperature for too long a duration would be a mistake.
 
No, I meant normalizing:

Normalization is an annealing process in which a metal is cooled in air after heating in order to relieve stress.

This process is typically confined to hardenable steel. It is used to refine grains which have been deformed through cold work, and can improve ductility and toughness of the steel. It involves heating the steel to just above its upper critical point. It is soaked for a short period then allowed to cool in air. Small grains are formed which give a much harder and tougher metal with normal tensile strength and not the maximum ductility achieved by annealing. It eliminates columnar grains and dendritic segregation that sometimes occurs during casting. Normalizing improves machinability of a component and provides dimensional stability if subjected to further heat treatment processes.

as neither me or you know what steel was used, we have no idea what the critical point of the material is - hence working our way up from a lower temperature.
 
Tcensor said:
No, I meant normalizing:

Normalization is an annealing process in which a metal is cooled in air after heating in order to relieve stress.

This process is typically confined to hardenable steel. It is used to refine grains which have been deformed through cold work, and can improve ductility and toughness of the steel. It involves heating the steel to just above its upper critical point. It is soaked for a short period then allowed to cool in air. Small grains are formed which give a much harder and tougher metal with normal tensile strength and not the maximum ductility achieved by annealing. It eliminates columnar grains and dendritic segregation that sometimes occurs during casting.....
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Not sure I'm following you about 'forming small grains' and 'eliminating columnar grains and dendritic segregation', etc. I can go along with possibly reducing stress (strain), but recrystallization stuff seems kind of tough at these temps. But, I'm not a metallurgist, so I don't know for sure...
 
Well, lets just say that the whole area of heat treating is fairly complicated and, at best there are about 10 opinions for every noted procedure. All I tried to do was suggest a short, fairly simple procedure that might aid this particular blade. certainly not start an in depth debate about metallurgy. I was asked if I had meant TEMPERING - again - I did not mean Tempering, I meant Normalizing - and hence, the in depth definition of the process.
 
Tcensor said:
No, I meant normalizing:
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:) I really need to type faster, or refresh the page more often.

Thanks for the tutorial in metallurgy though.

I think for now I'll hold off. I know bread-knifing, or even just some serious honing, won't ruin the blade, whereas the normalizing process may. (What would you expect to see if that was the case? Warping?)

It' really the first time i've dealt with a blade with real issues so at least it can serve as an object lesson.

Mainaman has volunteered to give her a go. If she defeats me I'll send her his way and see if he can tackle it. If that doesn't work out, then I'll be looking at this option again.

FWIW, she seemed to respond well to the Thuringian.
 
wdwrx said:
I think for now I'll hold off. I know bread-knifing, or even just some serious honing, won't ruin the blade, whereas the normalizing process may. (What would you expect to see if that was the case? Warping?)
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Could be a lot of things. I would probably expect to see what is usually referred to as "extra chunky peanut butter" which is an expression used to describe a huge variance in grain size and hardness. Warping is usually associated with much higher temperatures.
 
I decided to tackle this razor again this weekend.... She's got some serioulsly hard steel in her, this one.
I arbitrarily started with three layers of tape. (no idea of bevel angle here) and the worn out old easy-lap. Yikes! a handlefull of passes provided a most uncomfortable sensation of grittines, so I popped her under the scope and just about crapped my pants when i saw the horribly damaged edge! Looked like a mountain range with all big chunks missing.
So then I bread-knifed it, just very, very, gently, on a piece of slurry stone and off to the coti with a super thick slurry.... same damn thing. No progress, just big chunks falling out and an edge that looked like nothing resembling a razor's edge. ..... Another very gentle B-K and out comes the Thuringian and another super thick slurry. This seemed to work. Took forever to get a bevel set again:| finally but she's finally got a nice clean and straight bevel with just the very tinniest imperfections at the edge. Just barely visible under 100x magnification.
A hht 0 or 1 off the Thuringian and a good stropping on the coti pasted strop brought it up to a HHT 4.

Surprisingly, I'm not really looking forward to the shave with this one.... I have this idea in my mind that the bevel angle is too steep and the tiny imperfections worry me. And I find I tend to suffer a bit after shaving with Thuringian edges.... hence the coti pasted strop.... FWT'sW.

I'm scared now to take her back to the coti... this razor definately doesn't seem to perform well on them. And of course, I'm reluctant to try again without the tape. I guess I'll just have to see how the shave goes.
 
I don't know how your shave will turn out, but I can share with you that the few times I've had an edge that crumbled and chipped during honing, neither was it capable to withstand the stresses of impact with beard hairs. I too ended up setting bevels on my Nakayama (don't own a Thüringer), because it was gentler to the compromised steel. To no avail during the shave...
The only solution lies in finding better steel further down in the razor. Sometimes it's there. Sometimes not.

If you don't mind a stiff read, here's a yesteryear's thread about such a problem razor with your's truly in your shoes.
http://www.straightrazorplace.com/f...pics/33182-i-need-advice-crumbling-edge.html
If I recall correctly there was excellent information in it about various incarnations of invisible corrosion.

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
Thank you once again, kind Sir!

I'm always up for a good read. That seemed like quite a challenge, though with a good outcome. Not that I thought you were going to give up, and I'm glad the owner had the fortitude to go through with it. The thing most often repeated seemed to be "take more steel".

I've bookmarked the article on corrosion... I learn something everyday it seems.

In the case of my stuborn razor, since there is absutley no pitting or corrosion apparent, my assumption is that it is just very brittle steel, though it could be some phenomenon associated with the exposed metal at the edge which has been sitting for 40 some years. I'm a little worried about whether the edge will hold up for the shave. I've been holding out and cultivating a good 4 days growth so she'll have a good test tonight.:sleep: It's been quite a disappointment for me as I just love the size of this little razor, I do hope she comes around before she's whittled down to a nub.
 
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