Honing Around an Uneven Grind
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 :rolleyes:. 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 :D
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 :tu
