Thread: How does Lapping actually work?

Some of those curved glass DE hones also had a flat side for straight razors IIRC.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Some of those curved glass DE hones also had a flat side for straight razors IIRC.

I have often thought that the dished out hones from the late19th & early 20th century and the designed curved glass hones were used for the troublesome old wedges. Like if you have a lovely old dished hone and the wedge blade just rides on the spine and the edge and therefore taking out all the grinding on the sides of the wedge blade. Alx

Originally Posted by alx

I have often thought that the dished out hones from the late19th & early 20th century and the designed curved glass hones were used for the troublesome old wedges. Like if you have a lovely old dished hone and the wedge blade just rides on the spine and the edge and therefore taking out all the grinding on the sides of the wedge blade. Alx

This is a very well thought out observation.

Ya, sort of like the razor bridges the gap of the curve of the hone, and this takes out of play all the effort of working on the middle meat of the wedge. Alx

As already discussed, lapping will flatten and expose the true heart of the next level into the hone and remove all the unnecessary particles.

There are so many diamonds in a random spatter on a lapping plate (e.g. DMT 325), that you are effectively not making linear scratches in your hone. Where one diamond misses, another one cuts. And where 1 diamond cuts a line, another 100 cuts across, parallel and opposite to it....and so on...you get the idea.

True, there will be random scratches in your hone, but it really does NOT make the hone "act" like a coarser grit hone because of the scratches. Logic often makes guys think this, and that is why a lot of guys want to get it as smooth as humanly possible, but it does not really matter.

Remember; it is the particle size of your hone that abrades the metal of your razor, not the scratch marks in it.