Quote Originally Posted by Ben325e View Post
So I just got some .25 micron diamond spray in from hand american, and I was playing with it a bit. Not wanting to fully commit it to a leather bench hone, I grabbed a spare piece of 11x3 balsa and sprayed a few squirts on the surface.

I went to the bathroom and got one of my experimentation razors, a morley and sons clover 5/8 full hollow, and put a piece of tape on the spine. (Since it's an experimentation razor I goof around with it quite a bit and don't want to add more hone wear than necessary).

After a few strokes on the diamond I decided to give a microbevel a shot, too. I know that's really unscientific of me as you would ideally want to change only one variable at a time, but it's my experiement and I'm not sending this in to any peer reviewed journal, so whatever.

A bit of background: I've been freehand knife sharpening for quite a while now, and I've got knives that shave better than some of my razors. Sometimes I freehand a microbevel onto my knives and it's always worked out great. So I take the Morley and Sons and raise the taped spine off of the balsa a bit (maybe the height of a penny.... pretty stiff angle for a straight razor microbevel) and did four or five very careful strokes along the edge.

I went to the bathroom and stropped it up, grabbed the tabac and did a quick and dirty beard prep (I'd say 70% of my preps are quick and dirty...) and the shave was GREAT. Supasharp. And reasonably smooth. I'm sure it would've been smoother had I stropped more (only 40 or so strokes this time), but it wasn't uncomfortable in the least.

Had this been a leather bench hone or hanging strop, I wouldn't have gone for the microbevel, but on the balsa it worked great. If anyone is feeling daring and can freehand sharpen decently, give it a shot and let me know how it went for you.

Until I have bad experiences with it, I'll do it again some time.
Ben,
I know very little about knives other than what I tell my wife in that they need lots of maintanance and "ya see honey we need to by these hones to keep them just right"
Now to your experiment, you call in the knife world "putting a secondary bevel" on a stropping stroke too? Or did I totally not understand. Just curious.
Mike