Thread: Purposely casuing hone wear to even out the bevel.

I'm sure this has been asked in some form before, but I'm not really sure how to even phrase the question, let alone conduct a search for it. When I am honing a razor with wonky/uneven hone wear I currently use tape and some beginners honing gymnastics. This practice has worked fairly well so far, but I saw a post while reading the archives that got me thinking. Is it reasonable to selectively apply hone wear to a razor? By doing this, you can even out the hone wear to a consistant width, thereby causing a much smaller/consistant bevel on the edge of the razor. I know this is possible to do (obviously), but is it a reasonable course of action? I could see the possible benefits, but can also see that it would only be beneficial for certian situations.

I envision using a bevel setting stone and slowly working on the "smaller" hone wear areas of the tang to match the "larger" hone wear areas. I could see calipers being very useful as well. I would imagine you could then polish up the hone wear and use tape as "normal"?


Anyway, thought this was an interesting idea at the least. Anyone have any experience with this?

This is interesting. I guess it might be good to smooth it out as long as too much is not removed to accomplish even wear. It would seem beneficial for later touch-ups as a worn layer would not be necessary and starting all over, all that. I have done it in the past to make one look right after cleaning up rust and pitting from the spine, but taping before bevel set.

Have you ever noticed when I answer a question about wonkly bevels I normally give 3 choices to fix them ???

Tape
Re-grind

or the last option which is available, Grind the crap outta the razor trying to even it up..

Yes you can try and even up the bevel on the stones, it take a bit of trial and error to figure out how to get the desired effect on the bevel from honing the spine hard
But yes it does work

Originally Posted by gssixgun

it take a bit of trial and error to figure out how to get the desired effect on the bevel from honing the spine hard

That would be the part that concerns me the most. Adding or removing tape is easy to do and reversible if you don't like the result. Doing this incorrectly would just make make matters worse in a very permanent way. I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for a suitable canidate to experiment on.

My practice is to use tape only. If the hone wear on the spine is so uneven that the tape method fails then I just junk the razor. The reason is that I do not want the thickness of the spine to be so thin that the ratio of blade width/spine thickness exceeds 4:1 because that results in a wide & weaker bevel which is prone to micro-chipping.

Just my 2¢

Good point Randy. I did not even think of the structural issues. I think I will let this percolate in the back of my noggin for awhile longer.

I have done the flatten out the spine maneuver to fix uneven hone wear. The blade was a full hollow, no more than 5/8, straight spine profile and I just could not get a good edge on it. I determined it may have been the fault of the spine thickness nearest the tang as well as the double stabilizers raising the heel.
So the fix was to run the spine along my DMT 325 with the edge lifted ever so slightly off the hone while giving extra pressure to the area in question. Soon the hone wear was even all along the spine and I went back to honing on a 1k. Result was finally being successful at setting the bevel. It wasn't a pretty razor to begin with so the extra wear didn't bother me.

When you meet uneven wear there could be reasons behind:
Bad honing practice or
Something in the blade (bad practice as well but ...)
Acting without thinking might not result the best