Thread: Sharpening Stainless Double Edge Razor Blades

Sharpening old razor blades

yes, I saw that thread. I wanted to separate (potentially unsuccessful) experimenting vs. discussion as this would get lost in the middle of discussion.

I never tried very hard to sharpen these blades because they're flimsy, cheap and the older tools for carbon steel blades that were harder and uncoated won't work on these.

Actually, the original gillette blue type blades would be resharpenable, but they are also not stainless, so someone using them would need to remove a blade from a razor or leave the entire razor in some kind of anti-rust solution.

I had about 200 of those blades in the wall of my house behind the medicine cabinet (in the old days here, medicine cabinets had a slot in the back to put used razor blades in with the assumption that you could just stash them in the wall of the house forever and nobody would ever take the cabinet out - that would be safe disposal. Unfortunately, if your house was like mine and someone put a 2x4 cross brace below the medicine cabinet, instead of falling into the bottom of the wall, they packed up behind the medicine cabinet and fell out on me and into my hands in droves when i removed the cabinet.

Being that we're "smarty" woodworkers, I let them fall without reacting or squeezing or doing anything, and then carefully carried the ones I had in my hands until I found a place to dump them rather than dropping them with the others on the floor to pick up. Picking razor blades off of a tile for is sucky, as we say here in the states.


AT any rate, this is a standalone thread because a potential long string of failures would just clog the other thread like two people standing next to each other having unrelated conversations (with both getting confused).

David, have you ever used the Feather razor .... not the blades, but the Feather-made razor?

I have tried, and still own, a few different DE razors, a vintage Super Speed Gillette being one (made in 1942, if memory serves me). As nice as this is, it is simply not in the same class as the Feather it copied.

The difference is this: using the same blade, the Feather seems to bed the blade more rigidly and the resulting shave is without chatter. The Gillette does okay for a few shaves, then is done, and succeeding shaves feel coarse. I could now put the blade into the Feather, and it will plane .. shave ... smoothly again.

If you have not tried one, then you owe it to your face

Regards from Perth

Derek

I haven't yet, but it can only be how rigidly that they hold a blade that blades last longer in them.

I think I have four of their plated brass folding kamisori type, but haven't tried one yet. They're massive compared all of the other light weight single edge types.

As-d2 or as-d2s?

Interesting, although I have had a beard for over 40 years, I still shave the bits that don't behave, I gave up using DE razors very early as my grandfather introduced me to straight razors I have never looked back, I have also converted my partner, and she also uses a straight razor, ( very unusual for a female).
Back to the subject, my dad had a curved black Arkansas stone specifically designed for sharpening DE blades, It was the same grade of stone that surgeons used ( back in the day ), simply place the blade in the concave section with a bit of soapy water and slid it back and fourth a couple of times, flip and repeat, although is was designed for the blue blades it was just as effective on the "modern" stainless version.
I have it somewhere if I can find I will try it out and see what the results are

China, any chance of a photo? I cant picture this, unless its curved like a banana!

Originally Posted by China

Interesting, although I have had a beard for over 40 years, I still shave the bits that don't behave, I gave up using DE razors very early as my grandfather introduced me to straight razors I have never looked back, I have also converted my partner, and she also uses a straight razor, ( very unusual for a female).
Back to the subject, my dad had a curved black Arkansas stone specifically designed for sharpening DE blades, It was the same grade of stone that surgeons used ( back in the day ), simply place the blade in the concave section with a bit of soapy water and slid it back and fourth a couple of times, flip and repeat, although is was designed for the blue blades it was just as effective on the "modern" stainless version.
I have it somewhere if I can find I will try it out and see what the results are

I think alignment problems (deflected edges) are 90% of the early dulling or more, and a stone like that used with light or moderate pressure will realign right away and not cut too quickly.

I'm on the fence about whether or not the abrasive oxides are really necessary or if I'd do just as well finding a super clean smooth surface like a hard leather (even horse butt strip has stuff in it that will scuff a razor until it's been used for a while). At any rate, I have about 4 devices (glass and glazed abrasive where the maker put a glaze on the surface to reduce abrasive power) for the old carbon steel blades and they work well for them, but with significant use of a de blade, eventually, fixing the deflection no longer solves things).

I'm not likely to look at this closely for too many days in a row as I also use a straight razor and can't find anything (power or DE or multiblade, etc) that's really an even match for a straight razor. With the straight, you get a razor in shape for what you like and then it's the same every day for hundreds of days in a row. The whole idea of blades that change how they cut over a period of days is completely gone.

If you're wearing a beard or trimming up to a hairline, there's nothing remotely close to as good as a straight for it - it's so precise - put the razor right where you want a defined line, move it and done.

wooPixel imagine a square block bore a large hole through the center then cut in half, you are left with a half circle this where you put the blade ad move back and forth, when I find it I will post a pic

A report on the iron oxide shave - I think I forgot to update yesterday. The shave was smooth, it was sharp enough (like a 4 day used razor, but without any snags of edge damage). I suspect if a razor that's been touched up like this comes up short somewhere, it's with the person who attempts to put a gillette super speed (mild cutting razor) to 6 days' worth of facial hair.

it'll be a while before I've used one of these blades long enough to confirm longer term success or take pictures after some number of shaves. I think as the new blade is set, it will probably shave sort of middling indefinitely.

Sort of middling (smooth but slightly less aggressive) is ideal for me because of razor burn problems with new blades, but there are a lot of people who just really love the first day or two of shaves and then immediately throw their blades away. it won't appeal to them.

After four two-pass DE shaves, the iron oxided blade shows no evidence of damage, but it is apparent from the picture of of the blade that the tip is rounded over, so it would've been a surprise if the steel was weak enough to dent in its modified condition.

It is still shaving like a blade that's a few days old (As in, it's good for me because it doesn't razor burn me, but someone who is really addicted to the fragile and very acute edge may not find it tolerable).

I will continue to shave with it. if it's the same at one month as it is after 4 days, it'll be hard to conclude that it would degrade much. I'm going got continue to drag it across the iron ox every 4 or 5 days (which takes about 30 seconds) to keep it in shape. A small holder could easily be made to do what I'm doing, and perhaps with more consistent results. I'm inclined to chase it back toward sharpness after this.

Because of the level of the edge finish (almost visually imperceptible grooves), it's hard to tell if the platinum chrome coating (which is probably chrome, I doubt there's much platinum in a 13 cent blade) is gone or not.

I do think that an impulse hardened carbon steel blade would take to this method and last almost indefinitely without needing as much round over. But it wouldn't be in the interest of anyone to make a blade like that and such a thing needs to be dried each day (my grandfather used to take his gillette blade out each day according to my dad - he had one of the weaker blade holding trap door types like I have, and the convenience of the superspeed trap door must've been a net gain for folks based on making it faster to get the blade out of the razor).

So, it's 0.5 micron chrome-ox on balsa that's being used?

Is it a particular brand?

Lee Valley has some bumpf about their bars of CrOx/AlOx with the Veritas name.
I think they upped the % wax carrier.
Anyway, 0.5 micron CrOx mixed with some % of AlOx (0.25 micron) seems fairly common here.

KMS Tools here sells some in great cast bars but no trade name on them anywhere.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

So, it's 0.5 micron chrome-ox on balsa that's being used?

Is it a particular brand?

I'm using hand america graded chromium oxide pigment (literally a micronized version of what's in paint). it was $10 for four ounces, but they stopped selling it.

There are shaving paste makers who sell little tins for a multiple of that and with a quarter of the chrome ox in them, or a tenth. Pisses me off.

..BUT....that was for the initial attempts

It cuts too slow to use on tools, but oddly here, it cuts this soft stainless too fast, so I've gone a step down even from there to kremer pigments .09 micron (not a typo) micronized iron oxide.

Iron oxide is an interesting thing - it's softer on the mineral hardness scale than steel carbides, but there's some kind of lapidary effect named after a guy (and the name escapes me) such that it will polish steel that's harder than it. Every Jeweler school student probably knows what it is.