Honing Around an Uneven Grind

[richmondesi]

So, today I had my first really difficult razor to hone. I've dealt with a warped blade and smiling blades with success, but today I ran into a razor with a severely uneven grind (TI Le Grelot). One side of the blade laid perfectly on the hone, but the reverse side would touch at the toe and leave a huge gap at the heel. My first thought was to try a rolling x stroke, but I quickly realized that wouldn't work well because to get the middle of the blade to the hone, I'd have to apply a lot of pressure. That didn't look very promising, especially as I go through my progression of hones.

Instead of giving up on it, I shot Glen a PM and asked him to meet me in chat to discuss a plan of action (he's actually the one that pinpointed the cause of the problem being an uneven grind). When I told him what was wrong with the blade, he immediately said I should send it back, BUT... I bought it second hand off of a noob (he was getting out of straights and it was in a lot) who didn't realize the problem . So, I asked him about ways to hone around the problem and he suggested that I could try the Japanese honing technique. After asking several questions, I had a plan of attack and did pretty much like Glen suggested.

With the heel leading 20 to 30 degrees, I did 10 paintbrush strokes on the offending side of the blade and would do 3 or 4 on the flat side to keep the bevel from getting too out of whack on my Shapton 220. I repeated this process for a (pretty long) while until the unevenly ground side would actually lay flat on the hone. Then I looked at the bevel and realized that (as you may have imagined) the bevel was now asymmetrical (i.e., not a perfect V). So, I continued to do paint brush stroked, moving to the 500 stone, with the originally flat side getting the a 10:4 ratio of strokes until the bevel was symmetrical again. This really didn't take long at all.

After that, I went to the 1k and worked up my progression just like I would an eBay special, finishing on my Nakayama Kiita. At this point, there wasn't a test that I normally do that wasn't passed beautifully. Also, I was encouraged by looking at the edge under my microscope as well. Then, after 50 passes on the linen and 100 on the horsehide, it was time for a test shave.

The result? Butter

I can't tell you how satisfying a feeling it was to work through this problem to get a satisfying shave out of a razor that I wasn't sure would ever be worth anything to me. Obviously, this isn't something that I'd want to have to do a lot (nor am I necessarily recommending this for anyone else), but it worked really well for me. Of course, the bevel doesn't look nice and even like my OCD says it should, but I am now confident that it will be a good shaver for me for quite some time. Thanks a ton for reading this, and thanks Glen for the guidance

[gssixgun]

I love when a plan comes together, I am trying to think of how long ago it was might have been about a year... There were a whole mess of Le Gerlots out there and I got quite a few in to hone so did Lynn we were talking about some of the problems we had found with the edges.... It was weird some were perfect and easy to hone others were hard as heck and a very few had those un-even grinds... But congrats you got it fixed and shaving

[onimaru55]

Congrats, a perfect shaver doesn't have to be perfect looking regardless of one's OCD

And big ups to Mr Fixit aka Glen. I'd bet lots of us have called on his help & turned some bad situations around.