DIY Straight Razor From an Old Saw Blade

Intro: DIY Straight Razor From an Old Saw Blade

I love shaving with a straight razor but with all of my latest projects being old saw blade based, I figured:

I COULD MAKE MY OWN! Let's do it!

STEP 1: Video of My Process

Here is a video of my build. All work, no talking this time.

STEP 2: Cut the Razor

With an old saw blade handy, I marked up where I needed to cut (pics 1-4). Having an actual straight razor (pic 2) made this really easy but you can find photos to trace online.

Time to get to work cutting (I used my angle grinder). These are really inexpensive, especially the rinky dink ones from places like Harbor Freight. Heck, that is what I am using in pics 5-10. If you don't have a HF near you, I have been lucky finding good brands secondhand at garage sales and/or online markets.

If making curved cuts (8-10), give yourself some relief cuts and take your time. You can always clean up the roughness with extra grinding / sanding.

Pic 11 shows the beginnings of our razor and pic 12 proves it is nowhere near sharp enough...yet!

STEP 3: Shape the Blade

Having the rough shape of the razor, I went to work with my belt grinder to get a uniform and clean razor. (pics 1-3).

Pic 4 shows a glass of water to keep your metal from getting too hot. This is a saw blade so the composition should be good enough to take and hold an edge when we get to sharpening. Annealing the metal (aka, getting too hot to cause the metal to discolor) is a telltale sign you got too hot. This may make your blade too "soft." Knife enthusiasts, please correct as necessary. I am an amateur after all :)

Pic 5 shows one of my cleaned up edges. I will do the same with all edges and the faces of the blade.

I use a magnet to hold face to belt grinder to help protect my fingers (pic 6-8).

Results of the belt grindage are shown in pic 9-11. Just take your time and you will get there regardless of if you are using power tools or hand tools. I like this stage, personally. Throw on a podcast or your favorite playlist and get to it. I find it strangely calming...Maybe that is why I have been doing so many of these lately.

Marking the center of blade can be tough at first thought. You don't want to wind up with a wonky / lopsided blade after all. I use my caliper and mark the center of the blade with a 1/8th-inch drill bit (pic 12-15). As it turns out, this corresponded to my metric reading you see on the caliper pic above, go figure.

Many straight razors have a blade with a hollow grind. My attempt (pic 16-18) was to use my handheld belt grinder on an impromptu stand, since the rolly bit was more pronounced than my previously shown belt grinder. Spoiler alert, It didn't look as refined as the German steel I have seen at fancy shops. But am I happy with this as a literal first attempt, yeah! Yeah I am. Pic 9 was added to show some marks on both sides of my sander to fall back on. I don't have a rest and did not want my blade to go lopsided.

Approaching the edge, you can see that I was starting out off. This is why it is good to check your work often so you don't undershoot or even worse, overshoot. You can take metal off but not the other way around. I got the blade evened out to center after a little more work (pic 19-22)

Afterwards, using some various grits, I got to sanding the blade (pic 23-25). This will help smooth out some of the rough lines from the belt sander.

Pic 26 shows that the rough blade will cut but it is poor.

Sharpening the blade further, I used some wet sandpaper from 200 up to 1000 grit (pic 27-30). Notice my hand position in pic 28. I found it harder to control the gliding of my blade in this position but in pic 30 I have better control.

Pics 31 and 32 show the blade becoming more sharp with how clean it is cutting the paper, but there is still work to do.

Using stones and a strop, I got my blade ... razor sharp. (pic 33-37) I went up to 6000 grit with my current set up.

Pic 37 even shows the "wire" burr. If you look hard enough, you can see it.

Pic 38 shows that I finally can pass the arm hair test! That seems to be the quintessential passing grade with any blade-work.

STEP 4: Cut the Scales

Now that the hard part is behind us, it is time to get to work on the scales (which are just the protective wooden case the razor blade rests in. I had a scrap piece of oak and traced a rough outline (pics 1-4). Notice that I chose to go with a pointed edge as opposed to the traditional rounded edge of the scales. Just my own personalization but you do you.

Pic 4 & 5 show the point where I want the rods to lock the blade to the scales on the back side.

Using my bandsaw, I cut the scales to a width of 4 millimeters (pic 6-9). This is will give me enough wiggle room for the blade to slide around freely without being too loose.

Pic 8 I am showing a hand plane in case you need to some quick smoothing of the roughly sawn edge. A sharp plane will make this way faster than hand sanding.

Pic 10 shows that I taped the two scales together to get ready to cut them to final shape.

STEP 5: Shape the Scales

With the pieces taped tightly together, I roughly cut off the excess wood (pics 1-3). Pics 4-9 shows the sanding to smooth them out. Everyone loves sanding...

I purposely annealed the end that I needed to drill a hole for the pivot pin (pic 10) and quenched it quickly (pic 11). This was performed to make it easier for my drill bit to bite into. A super hard blade will make this a nightmare and you risk destroying many many bits. Re-marked, punched, and drilled (pic 12-14), my blade was ready to meet the scales for final assembly. However, I still needed the wedge for the other end of the scales where the point of the razor is located (pic 15).

Having ample scrap copper (pic 16), I got a thicker piece, marked, and cut it to rough shape (pic17-20). I like the contrast of oak and copper. It is sort of like the popular combination of walnut and brass, to me.

No need to shape the copper wedge on the sander just yet. It will look better shaped to the scales as opposed to doing before installing it to the scales. That way, it is harder to overshoot your sanding.

STEP 6: Put It All Together

With the copper wedge in place (pic 1), I hammered and peened all of the rods to hold the wedge, blade, and scales together (pic 2-4).

In the interim, I sanded the copper wedge to the edge of the scales (I figure you have seen enough sanding and get the point, lol). You will also notice that I have a yakisugi (shou sugi ban) blazed finished on my oak scales. IMO, it looks awesome.

In pics 5 & 6, you will see that I oiled up the wood on the faces and all the nooks and crannies. Pic 7 shows the final product!

I love my straight razors and the shaving experience, in general. Making and using a custom straight razor that I made...chef's kiss. It is an amazing feeling.

I added it to my straight razor kit that you saw in the intro and I will be on my way. I hope you find this useful/inspiring and hey, if you got old saw blades, I suggest making them into something that provides you or a loved one joy.

See you on the next one! Peace!!

Comments

[uncle reamus]

Annealing is indeed softening the material. However getting to change color on the grinder is not annealing. To anneal the steel is brought to critical temp, non-magnetic for ferrous material, ~1350* F. That is when it is a red glowing color. The material is then slow cooled over a period of hours. In a controlled environment such as a heat treating oven or a bucket of perlite works well for simple steels.

When a blade is made the first step before cutting, grinding or forging is anneal the material. After shaping the blade it is then hardened by heatng to critical temp then rapidly cooling (quenching), the blade would then be heated to ~500*F - ~800* depending on how hard you wish to keep the blade. Held at that temp for a couple hours. The allowed to cool to room temp. This is tempering. Annealing, hardening, and tempering are all part of the heat treating process.

If you wish to continue making blades i highly suggest downloading the "Heat Treaters Comapanion" it is a free app that covers heat treatment of most steels.

Here in the USA most saw blades are a 15N20 steel. Most, that does not mean all.

And lastly, nice razor. Very pleasing to the eye.

[TheMadScientist314]

I've been conisdering making a knife out of an old saw blade myself, but the heat treating process always seemed complicated. I though saw blades were already hardened (or are they?), so I'm assuming the anneal is just to make working the blade easier. Then because you softened it you have reharden it. But could you theoretically just take an angle grinder, cut out a shape, and sharpen an edge on it? My dad did something like this a while back and it seemed to work fine, though he never did really use it enough to test the edge durability. And even if a saw blade isn't actually hardened, you could harden it at the end right? This still seems much easier, but everyone else seems to follow a process similar to the one you described above. Maybe I'm missing something.

[uncle reamus]

Saw blades like any tool come hardened.

Yes but it will take longer and you will wear out grinding belts, disks, and stones real quick. You also have to keep it cool. It the material changes color from the heat of the grinder you just took the hardness out of that spot. There have been many people make quite fine blades that way. As with any smithing, you do it the way it works for you.

You do not need a fancy forge or oven to do the annealing or heat treating. As long as it is simple steel. Get into the A-2, D-2, S-7, etc. and that is a different story. Small blades can be heated to critical with a MAPP gas plumbers torch. You can even build a small forge with one of those. Like a coffee can or single brick forge. For larger blade a simple hole dug in the back yard, a piece of pipe, a sack of lump charcoal, and a hair dryer is more than enough to get it to critical.

[TheMadScientist314]

Thanks for the reply and great advice! I hope to be getting a real forge sometime soon, but I do kind of like the idea of a "white smith." I'll see what I can do when I get the time.

[Dankozi713]

I have folks make knives specifically out of something already hardened for those with limited blade making supplies. My understanding from their instruction is that you can shape a hardened blade but it takes WAY more effort than an annealed blade. Granted, an annealed blade would in fact need to be re hardened and tempered but if it wasn’t annealed in the first place you can skip that part? I’m no blade smith so experts can feel free to correct 👍🏽

[uncle reamus]

Back in the day smiths were called their name by the product they made color. A blacksmith worked with iron that was black when they were done. IIRC a red smith worked with copper, a yellow smith bronze/brass and of course gold and silver are kind of self explanatory. Their was also the profession of white smith. They worked with steel and iron but their tools were the file, chisels, grinders, etc. Rather than the forge, hammer, and anvil. When you take a piece of say saw blade, cut it to shape then grind it into a knife, that is white smithing.

[Dankozi713]

Dang, Uncle Reamus! Really good info here and it’s hard for me to keep annealing/hardening/tempering straight (clearly), but your explanation definitely helps.
I am getting bit by the blade bug so I’ll keep your recommendation in mind. But I gotta follow up question: what do the figures mean in the 15N20 steel? Carbon or other alloy content?

[uncle reamus]

That question has a very long answer. Simply put, the "1" indicates that plain carbon steel, the second is the alloying material, "5" being manganese. the "N" is nickel. The last 2 digits usually indicate carbon content for example a 1095 contains .95% carbon. However in the case of 15N20 it is actually .75% I use a lot of 12L14 steel as a machinist. Carbon steel resulfurized/rephosphurised, lead added, min. of .14% carbon. In my forge i stick with either 1018 or 1030, easy to forge, simple steel. I do not make knives or blades though. I do mostly ornamental work. look up AISA/SAE alloy numbers will give a much more detailed explantion. Also these are American designations, they will be dfferent in Europe or Asia but there are dozens of cross referencing charts.

It is the nickel in the 15N20 steel that makes the bright shiny parts of the pattern when you do pattern welded (damascus) steel.

If you really want to make knives i would suggest joining a couple forums such as "bladeforums" and "Iforgeiron". the latter IFI is all smithing but has a lot of bladesmiths and even gunsmiths. It is an absolute treasure trove of information. That is the one i am a member of. I do not know much about "Bladeforums". You may also want to see if there is a blacksmith organization near you. If you are in the states ABANA (artisan blacksmith association of North America) has at least one affilate in each state, mine has 5. They teach classes but are rather expensive. However they also have meetings at least once a month where smiths get together and share knowledge, techniques, and tall tales. Quite fun.

A copy of Machinery's Handbook will also come in useful. New it is about $150 but you can get used ones around $20 or so.

Have fun, stay safe, and welcome to the world of smithing.

[uncle reamus]

I made one glaring mistake 15N20 is the manufacture's designation not an AISA/AES designation.

[Dankozi713]

Thank you for the info and taking the time to write that out! I’ll have to check out my area for what you had mentioned if/when I look to level up my blade smithing and/or forging. I just got some new toys and they need some TLC. Thanks again for the information.

[007cardo]

Nice project! Great video!

[Dankozi713]

Thanks for checking them out!!