My vocabulary is not good enough to express what I feel about your work, Bill. WOW! It is truly breathtaking!
Kewl thread Well i enjoyed all the posts,till those funny comments started coming...right on Bill.... Seeing the blade work at different stages really makes it clear as to how it is done, as regarding the time it looks like it takes, man you must have the patience of a saint...but thinking about it and seeing it, its amazing how its done.....too cool... Nice work bill simon
Thanks to all of you for all of the compliments... they are all received with appreciation. All of the razors are spoken for. Most of 'em without pricetags on them yet. It didn't seem to matter much to anyone. All I have said to my customers is that I would try to keep them at or under $400. I'm gonna be able to keep my word on that. I know I could get more based on other custom prices around these days because I know my work meets or exceeds anything out there... but for some reason, running my prices up just doesn't seem right to me. I have to consider availability because I'm not sure when I'll get around to making more. Because of that, one of the single-piece razors will go on ebay. It's the only way I can figure to be fair and not slight one customer over another. There may even be a second one that I will do the same thing with because the guy who it was promised to has been waiting about a year for it. He may change his mind... we'll see. That leaves the one out of 440C stainless that I am going to give to the ShaveDen. I will finish that one up first when it comes back from heat treat. It will be a raffle-based affair. I think I will need to limit ticket sales so that everyone has a better chance at winning. Minimum buy-in is $6 for 5 numbers. The odd dollar is just to cover the paypal charges to my account. All other proceeds go to the Den. I'm even going to absorb the material costs. I'm thinking 500 total tickets - any thoughts? Allow more? Maybe I should limit the number of tickets sold to any single person, as well, to make it more fair - Yes/No ? Anyone have concerns about how the raffle will be conducted?
Indeed, raffles are always fun! And at the very least it goes towards a good cause and someone gets a great collectors piece!
Sounds great Bill, I think limiting the amount of tickets someone can buy is good...It makes it fare for the person who may not be able to afford a lot of tickets and still gives them a chance to win. This is an Extremely generous gesture, and is very appreciated by all
not only generous, but also extremely thoughtfull of you Bill. I also like the idea of limiting it so that everybody gets more or less equal chance.
Staying tuned on the raffle. I could not afford one of those beauties at the moment, but when I can Bill, you WILL be getting an order from me. I cannot believe the file work on the handles and spines of those you are showing. Absolutely stunning work. Now I just need to have my first straight shave......roflrofl I might be putting the cart in front of the horse a bit, but I am just blown away by your work. One question to the mods so I don't miss it, where will I find the thread for the proposed raffle when it goes "online"?:drool
Dont know yet but..... Im guessing it wont be too hard to find $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Great job, Bill A very generous offer ::
Bill excellent work, I can`t add anything except agree with nearly every one else's comments, A quick question if I may,when finishing off the file work do yo polish by wrapping wet and dry around the respective shaped files and work up to finer grades or do you just hang on tight and shove it in the buffer I know it dosn`t sound like it ,but it is a serious question Thanks for the tute mate Kind regards Peter PS if you keep turning out work like this , I`m given up ,taking my ball and going home
Since anything other than intended crisp edges look really good to me, I do my polishing with the sandpapers as you noted. I only round off the outer edges of my scales. I also am not a big fan of mirror finishes for the same reason and that's because the buffing process rounds the nice lines of the knife/razor away. With that said, I seldom take a blade to the buffer for the filework. I will usually use the radial bristle discs to remove the discoloration from the heat treat process. A toothbrush and MEK works ok at removing a lot of the discoloration as well. I don't polish the fileworked areas too much because then the contrast is lost and the patterns don't show up as pronounced as they would otherwise. Don't do that. You are doing just fine. Remember, I've been doing this a lot longer than you. Since '91. I'm bound to get a good one once in a while after that amount of time.