Thread: Sad smile?

hey all,

Ive got some vintage razors, but instead of a normal smile , they seems to have more of like a sad smile
should I also use the rolling x for this or might a regular x stroke take care of the edges ;o?
anyhow, how could one have honed this blade in the past to achieve this kind of curve, knowing the width of his blade was larger than his hone's, I guess he wasn't using a regular X pattern? ;o
and would there be any downsides or benefits shaving with a blade like this?

thx

This kind of grind, I call it recurve, is caused by many honing issues.
The major one being a honing technique, that allows the middle of the edge to have longer/more contact with the hone, than the rest (ie toe and point).

Such a technique would be the "8"-technque,
where an 8-pattern is being performed on the hone.
This way the middle always stays in contact with the hone,
but the toe and point each have less than half the time spend on the cutting agent.
This results in uneven wear.

A member of the german community "gut-rasiert" named guilty made an experiment concearning this problem.
He made some 8-patterns on a 1.000 hone,
you can see the pictures here:
Antikes TI Le Grelot: "Negativ lächelnde" Klinge, zu breiter Rücken.

it´s the answer #5

A X-pattern would be counterproductive.
During the X-pattern, performed on a flat hone,
the middle of the razor always stays in contact with the hone,
wheras the toe and point don´t. This won´t solve your problem,
I guess it would make it worse.

I tried two methods to restore recurves.
Both require a lot of work and metal removing.

The first method is to breadknife the blade to flatness.
This means you put the edge to the hone, as if you wanted to cut the hone (90°).
You then "saw" with the blade until the recurve is gone.
Then you will have to restore the edge, you totally ruined with this action.

The other thing I did was perfoming stricly straight sharpening patterns.
I taped the spine with one or two very wear resistant tapes
and went to a 400 grit diamond hone.
It took about 45minutes but I got the blade perfectly straight again.
But like I mentioned, it did cost a lot of metal (it always does).
If your coarse stone is not as wide as the razor is,
still try to do straight patterns but devide the blade in two sections

Originally Posted by Lesslemming

If your coarse stone is not as wide as the razor is,
still try to do straight patterns but devide the blade in two sections

i also had this in mind,
thanks for the info and taking the time to comment on this
I appreciate it

looking at the pictures in that thread, my 'smile' is actually pretty small
my memory made it bigger than it actually is, it's there but it's actually not that far off from being flat.
I'll will do straight patterns trying to flat it out tho

That shape is commonly called a frown here, you have a frowning blade. Run a search for it and you will see plenty of posts that can be of good help. Frowning blades are poor shavers with high risk of nicks and cuts.

Like sparq said, sounds like the dreaded frown. Here is a barber manual excerpt on honing. On page 24 you'll see an explanation with illustrations of how to avoid causing a frown when honing a razor. Correcting a frown may be a more advanced technique. IIRC sixgun has a tutorial in the SRP Wiki on the topic. If not do a search in the thread archives for frown and you'll see a lot of info.

aaah,
ok guys, I didn't know it was called a frown
thanks a lot for the replies!

+1 to the above. Sounds like you got a frown there.

The hardest thing about straightening it out, is when the time comes to reset the bevel. removing even a small frown can require a good bit of time on a low grit hone to get a good bevel back on it.

If you have any doubts, I would send it out to have it removed and re-honed.

Lots of good people in the classifieds that could help you out for sure

Would love to see some pics of this mysters razor as well

interesting ,

what exactly causes these frowns?
I'm not sure, I'm also pretty new to honing, but this is what I think

so when you hone and the middle of your blade sees more hone action than the other parts I'm assuming that causes a frown.

I'm guessing that can happen by applying the x pattern,
but I think it can also happen if you just use straight draws where the center of your blade gets honed along when you hone your heel and your point, so it sees sort of like double the action than the other parts of your blade

i love my natural combo coticule ^^

did the technique of straight strokes, also as described in the barbering honing textbook, blade is pretty much perfectly flat atm, so I'm kinda happy with the progress so far

thanks for all the input!

Originally Posted by joshDHM

interesting ,

what exactly causes these frowns?
I'm not sure, I'm also pretty new to honing, but this is what I think

so when you hone and the middle of your blade sees more hone action than the other parts I'm assuming that causes a frown.

I'm guessing that can happen by applying the x pattern,
but I think it can also happen if you just use straight draws where the center of your blade gets honed along when you hone your heel and your point, so it sees sort of like double the action than the other parts of your blade

Josh, if you go to post 5 in this thread and click on the link to the barber manual excerpt you'll find an explanation of what causes a frown and how to avoid it. The x pattern when done properly is about the best way to hone a razor IMO and IME. YMMV.