Turn that frown upside down
First, I'll throw out a thank you to Gssixgun for the honing videos on managing a frown via bread knifing. Today was the first razor I've had to hone that had a frown. I picked up a decent looking Yama 770 razor off of eBay this week. It had a frown in it and was advertised that way. I wanted the challenge and the price was right and offered the possibility of a really nice razor if I could resolve the issue. So I took on the task of dealing with my first frowning edge. It wasn't the most extreme example I've seen before.......on eBay anyway. But it was there to be sure. But being a modest frown I didn't bread knife the edge. I put it on my DMT at about a 45 degree angle and did sets of 30 circles over and over working at and reshaping the heel as well. Once I could see that the frown was removed, I reduced the angle to about 20 degrees and continued to shape the edge. Then I attempted to create an edge with three layers of tape. I think I left this stage too quickly. Not knowing what to expect and being almost alarmed at what I was seeing under my microscope, I moved onto the 1k too quickly. I should have worked the edge further with three layers on the DMT to shape a bevel more thoroughly. I stripped off two layers of the tape and went at it on the 1k. It took a long time to get a bevel set and the tip was incredibly stubborn. It required som individual attention. But in the end I was able to remove the frown and re set the bevel. Tomorrow I'll finish it up and test shave it since in working on a three day beard. The good news is that the steel looks really nice. I'm anticipating a really good edge once completed.
