Thread: "Half-moon" stroke for smiley razor

Hey all,

So I don't consider myself a honing newbie anymore as I've had great progress honing several blades now, and shave entirely with self-honed blades. But I got this Wm. Elliot and Co. razor off of ebay a few months back, and it has a fairly pronounced smile in it. It's supposed to as the spine is really curved too.

So after honing out a chip in it (which was only about 1mm deep) I proceeded to but a bevel on it. It proved very difficult to but an even bevel on such a smiley blade with the conventional X-stroke. I used narrow hones, about 1 1/4" - 1 1/2", but this was still proving to be a problem.

I suspected I was having trouble creating a good bevel on the heel and toe, but of course the middle was easy to hone. The marker test confirmed this, especially by the heel where a good 1/4" wasn't coming off!

I don't know if you've watched Sham's (hi_bud_gl) honing videos, but he describes a stroke he calls a "half-moon". It's basically making a half-circular stroke with the razor piviting around the heel. Well I tried that with the edge markered up, and it came off the ENTIRE length in only 1 stroke each side. The rest came easily. I just kept that stroke for the 1000, 4000, 8000, coticule then my escher. Stropped it and it passed my hair tests with flying colours (which have proven to be quite reliable for me). Still haven't shaved with it, but I have confidence that it'll be great.

So the whole point of my long story is to say that I found the half-moon stroke worked WONDERFULLY for me for a smiling razor. I'm now less reluctant to pick up smiling razors in the future since I know have another technique to help tame them!

I'll post a picture of the razor below, it's just has mineral oil on it there in case you were wondering why it looks like that. The smile doesn't even look that pronounced in the photo, but when you lie the spine against a flat surface you'd see how curved it was.