The RSO Project - Seeing if an RSO can be made shave-able

[rbscebu]

INTRODUCTION

For most of my adult live I had wet shaved with cart. I hated it so much that I had whittled my shaves down to only 2 or 3 times a week. There had to be something better. "Safety" razors were out of the question since I sat on one in my pre-teens and still had the scar to show for it. I had previously tried electric shavers but they were worse than carts. This left me thinking about how my grandfather and eldest uncle shaved with straight razors.

My very first attempt at SR shaving was in late 2019 while living in the Philippines. I already had a brush and soap so I ordered a SR, leather strop and whetstone on Lazarda from China. All up it cost me under USD20 including shipping. I felt rather proud of myself.

A few weeks later my goodies arrived. The razor looked good (what would I know?) but would cut soft butter only if first heated and used with a sawing motion. Definitely not shaving material. I spent the next month or so trying to sharpen it on the 150mm x 25mm quartz(?) whetstone I had bought. Nothing worked!

I then joined a US based wet shaving forum and asked for help. The help I received was that my pride and joy razor was not what I thought. It was a razor shaped object (RSO). Ne3xt step was to buy a real SR. Being the Philippines where even their government don't use their own postal service due to theft and corruption, I had to again order through Lazarda from China. It was a tossup between a Gold Dollar 66 (about USD10) or a Titan ACRM-2 T.H.60 (about USD20). I decided on the Titan as I prefer the feel of timber over plastic for the scales. The Titan came with a rather decent leather strop and a slate whetstone that actually worked.

To cut a long story short, with guidance from member on the US forum, I eventually got the Titan keen enough to shave and started learning how to SR shave, strop and hone. The rest is history.

THE RSO PROJECT

A month or so ago I decided that, with my now acquired knowledge, I wanted to see I could actually get an RSO to shave-ready. I search AliExpress and found a "razor" that looked very similar to my first RSO. It was ordered (about USD6 including shipping) and it arrived in yesterday morning's mail. Here are my initial impressions:

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The timber scales look good. The razor was much much shorter than normal having an edge length of about 65mm (normally about 70mm) and an overall opened length of about 187mm (normally about 240mm). To achieve this remarkable feet of miniaturization, the blade's shank length had been reduced to about 7mm from the normal of about 30mm. Not enough room to fit even the smallest of a thumb.

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Another interesting observation was the blade width that varied fro 15mm at the heel to 17mm near the toe.

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To make this blade a little more challenging to hone the spine thickness varies from 2.9mm near the heel to 2.3mm near the toe. The blade's grind does have some hollow to it but I would class the grind as near wedge with a blade thickness at the top of the bevel of a whopping 0.8mm (normally about 0.2mm or less on a good SR). The blade is claimed to be of stainless steel. This appears to be true and is possibly actually a martensitic type (magnetic) rather than austensitic (non-magnetic). Austenitic cannot he heat treated.

Another minor idiosyncrasy of this razor is its "wedge", better defined here as a spacer. It consists of a piece of stainlerss steel sheet about 0.8mm thick. This means that the blade only just enters the scales at the toe. The hing pin is fitted with two steel washers.

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Next isd dcecide how to approach the RSO project. I will give it some thought and report back in this thread.

 

[rbscebu]

With a bit of free time time on my hands during the Christmas/New Year break, I have put some thought and effort into this little project. First was to get the blade to sit more into the scales. I achieved this by sanding the inside surfaces of the scales at the wedge end to open up the gap between each scale. all worked well.

Before

After
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Next was to attack the stabiliser. As the blade's grind is a near wedge with a rather plump blade thickness, nom stabiliser is really required and I wanted more room to fit my thumb on the underside of the shank. Out came the Dremel with a flexible extension fitted with a suitable small diameter grinding wheel. I performed this grinding underwater so as to prevent any heat from affecting the blade's temper.

With the grinding done, I heavily bread-knifed the blade's edge on the side of a 400 grit Chinese synthetic whetstone. This was to modify the blade's profile so that the blade width was reasonable consistent along its length. Again, another success.

Before

After
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This still requires some cleanup work in the shank/heel area but I will attend to that after I see if I can hone this blade to a reasonable shaving standard.

I normally do not hone with tape unless it is absolutely necessary or requested by a client. In this case, being a near wedge with a 180° bevel angle, is is necessary so I will heavily tape the spine until I get close to a bevel-set. The final bevel-set will be made without tape.

From the grinding and bread-knifing, the steel of this blade is hard. I expect a lot of time and tape will be consumed in its initial honing.

 

[rbscebu]

Before getting stuck into the honing, I measured the blade's natural bevel angle. At 11.3° it is a bit too fine for my liking. My preferred minimum is about 15° so I will start with 5 layers of tape on the spine. As I get closer to the bevel set I will reduce that down to 4 layers. That should get me to about 15°.