Three razors, well, two, but the order is for three. It's really not complicated.

I met some great people at the #Manassas Fall Jubilee this year, and I love working events in that town! One lady in particular, let's call her J, recently reached out to get some handcrafted gifts for the men in her life. She chose one safety razor she'd seen at the Jubilee and (after some brief correspondence) elected to have two more commissioned. The materials recently arrived and I've begun work.

Blue and green blanks cut to size

The green blank came pre-drilled, but the blue didn't

Drilled, tube-glued and trimmed, Blue now goes on the lathe. Note the piece on the right. It's there to fill space on the spindle (and also become a beautiful stylus). More on it later ...

Blue begins getting it's rough shaping

The skew is the final tool used before sanding ... lots and lots of sanding. Every piece goes through 100, 120, 220, 340, 400, 600 and 800 grit sanding, stopping between each to sand length-wise.

After sanding, I wet-sand with micro-mesh, a 10-step process (thankfully much faster than sanding) going up to 12,000 grit.

After all that sanding, each piece gets two coats of plastic polish. By the way, see the filler piece mentioned earlier? It couldn't take the stress of shaping and exploded on the lathe. It doesn't happen often, but is a huge disappointment when it does. Oh well, not everything can be a masterpiece, I suppose.

Blue gets a coat of wax in its final step on the lathe.

Green begins its turning.

The skew removes very fine layers to smooth the acrylic out for sanding.

So. Much. Sanding.

Here's Green right after its wet sanding, but before polish and wax. Looks pretty good, right?

Green getting its plastic polish (wish the focus was better). This is a "friction polish." It's activated by the friction-induced heat of spinning against the cloth. Have to be careful with lathe speed and pressure during this step. You can burn the material (or your finger) if either are too strong, but it'll do nothing if either are too weak. Gotta find that 'Goldilocks' zone. After this it gets a coat of wax and is ready for mounting.

Parts layout and check

Here's Blue getting its head and tail mounted using a pen press. Below are the finished razors. I hope you've enjoyed the journey!