Thread: Some thoughts on how wedges were honed in the day...

First lets define a wedge, as any heavy bladed 1/4 hollow or less old razor....

I have been doing my fair share of these as of late and have noticed some things, and wanted to see if anyone else has come to the same or other conclusions...

Almost, every one has to have a huge re-bevel set to what we (SRP) consider shave ready... The original bevels are much much smaller and steeper... This has led me to some therories...
I think when the original bevel were done, the cutler used a cheater strip of metal, something like a faux frameback to set the steep bevel and that the edges were then sharpened on a pasted loom style strop set slightly looser then what we consider optimal.... This would explain the small, steep, rounded, bevel that I am finding on these razors.... what do you guys think?????

I saw this in the "New Threads" windows, just recently:

Some thoughts on how wedges were honed in the day...
gssixgun

Today 09:01 PM
by gssixgun

0 1 ...and then my head exploded!
JMS

Today 08:58 PM
by majurey

8 102 The Conversation

I have done a few. They always took a bit of extra bevel correction work.
For what it's worth, I have seen the owner of a Belgian store, that sells traditional cutlery, straight, DE's and other shaving gear, hone up a razor on a couple of occasions. He hones a while on a big coticule, whithout much testing (he relies on how the water runs up the blade). After that he goes to a pasted paddle strop, with red Dovo paste. He tries to shave a hair, and if he's not pleased, he loosens the strop a bit...
I can imagine that he needs to loosen the strop each time he hones a wedge, and more if he hones it again. But I don't think that faux frameback honing (I have thinking about this for honing my kitchen knives) was the standard way to hone a (near) wedge.

Just some thoughts,

Bart.

or could it just be they were sharpened like a knife? Then continually touched up on a pasted strop.

It is surprising how quickly information can be lost sometimes. It was not that long ago.

Have you ever seen anything that looks like the spine cover?

I see a lot of spine wear on those old wedges. Maybe the bevels are just rounded through age and corrosion? Heavy pasted strop usage?

I also remember having seen some old hones on ebay that were seriously dished out in the middle. maybe such a curved hone would explain a steeper bevel angle

Hmmmm good point Lee I have seen those too

I haven't ever seen one Kevin except for the detachable blade razors, that's what made me think of it..

I have no idea. All I know is that the ones I have honed have taken awhile. I always assumed that it was as Lee said, just age, corrosion and knocking around for 150 years.

Bevels. Bevels are a big topic among knife and other blade makers. A wedge is a V-shaped blade with no hollow grinding. Are there "modified wedges"? Probably, but only if the marketers of that company saw a sales advantage to claiming affinity to a wedge rather than a hollow grind. A hollow grind, whether it be symmetric or asymmetric, leaves a lot less steel behind the edge and is only for very specific purposes such as shaving blades. A microtome has a wedge shape and they're honed flat on the stone in some cases and on a very acute angle in other cases depending on manufacturer. I'll post a pic after I figure out where mine is stashed!

If you look on my Honing HowTo page, you'll see an excerpt from a 1908 book on honing microtomes. 1908 must be "back in the day" although, as I'm getting older, "the day" seems to be more vivid in my memory . . . . How did they hone? They used belgians and fine arkansas stones. The strops they used were plain leather. It was all fairly primitive relative to what we have today. They couldn't have achieved an edge like that from a 30000 Shapton.

I'm more with Randy on this one. The heavy, nearly wedge shaped blades were harder to hone and the typical home user did whatever was needed to get the edge to shave again without any of the science we are apply to it as a hobby. A dished stone, the spine lifted up as in sharpening a knife, whatever it took. The result is odd spine wear, odd bevels, etc...

I have a few early wedges that still shave that all show odd wear. one even looks like it was taken to a large round whetstone to add a bit of hollow to it at some point and looks terrible.....it also came out of it's ancient coffin shaped case ready to shave!

Tony

OK Gents I have one, Grottolord / Mike sent a huge A$$ meat chopper to hone out and this has the old bevel intact and obviously it was being used... I will post pics on this one, and I have Mike's permission to take my time and do many of the tests so I can figure out what sort of angle this edge was originally done at.... stay tuned...