Thread: Honing antique Chinese razor -- suggestions?

Chris (C utz) was good enough to sell me his Chinese razor that had been knocking around in his project drawer. Pictures below, taken before he cleaned it up.

I'm assuming the steel on this is no better than Pakistani steel (that way the only way is up ), but it looks to be a fun time ahead!

Have any of the more experienced honemeisters tried honing one of these up? Any pointers very gratefully received.

And if no-one has experience of these blades, I'm looking for any suggestions!

Some points to note:

• The blade is short: 2 inches from toe to heel.
• It is an unashamedly wedge grind, 9/8 at it's widest (toe to spine).
• Total length with scales open is 5".
• The edge includes that funny little chicane near the shoulder.

I'd really like to see how this shaves.

Cheers
M.

Wow Mark. Looks a little like those tomahawk style colonial America era things you see every once in a while. Is that as thick and heavy as it looks? Needless to say, I have zero experience with anything similar. I would just try to clean it up a bit with some Maas type cleaner then begin a 220/1000, 4k/8k, Coticule progression. After that I would consider more aggressive cleaning/shining. Let us know how it goes!

Ha ha, yes, I guess it does look like a tomahawk! Except it would be for a mini-sized warrior.

Chris had done a pretty good job of cleaning it up since the photo was taken. There was quite a bit of pitting, so Maas isn't going to add much to the job he's done.

I'm tempted to try honing without resetting the bevel. Looks to me like Chris has set a fairly decent bevel on this already.

So how isthe honing going.. i have one without the chicane

I haven't hit the hones yet. I'm kind of circling around this thing, thinking about how I might tackle it, somewhat daunted by the job!

I've taken a look under some weak magnification and can see a couple of tiny chips, so it's going to be a longer task than first expected.

For the chicane I'm going to hone as if it was a smile or frown, I think. But I'm not going to get too hung up on it since it's really only confined to the heel and I'm not certain I'll be shaving with that part of the blade anyway.

Been a little busy recently, but hopefully I'll have a go at it this weekend.

Good luck - make sure to give us an update!