Thread: Honing with/without tape... Testing the theories

I agree that there is nothing wrong with using tape. I give my customers a choice when I hone for them. When I restore razors for sale though I only use tape if there is something really odd going on, and then I make customers aware of this.

It is a funny old discussion. I wonder if tape here in the UK is the same as in the states? Each layer of tape adds 1mm to the spine. Is that the same?

Carl

Originally Posted by straightrazorheaven

I agree that there is nothing wrong with using tape. I give my customers a choice when I hone for them. When I restore razors for sale though I only use tape if there is something really odd going on, and then I make customers aware of this.

It is a funny old discussion. I wonder if tape here in the UK is the same as in the states? Each layer of tape adds 1mm to the spine. Is that the same?

Carl

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Carl

My tape is .0057 inches thick. Just convert that to mm.

Jerry

That's an interesting post, but for me, mainly around the frequency of honing. I refresh my razors on a Shapton16k; maybe 20 laps, around once a month to every six weeks. Am I honing too often? I have a rotation of 5 straights. They each get used once a week. I do realise there's a lot of factors that would determine the need to refresh/hone, but what would be the 'norm', generally speaking?

I hone normally just to practice and for something to do, i.e. as part of the 'hobby'...

Originally Posted by carlmaloschneider

That's an interesting post, but for me, mainly around the frequency of honing. I refresh my razors on a Shapton16k; maybe 20 laps, around once a month to every six weeks. Am I honing too often? I have a rotation of 5 straights. They each get used once a week. I do realise there's a lot of factors that would determine the need to refresh/hone, but what would be the 'norm', generally speaking?

I hone normally just to practice and for something to do, i.e. as part of the 'hobby'...

I doubt that a Norm can ever be figured although many of us try LOL

Just thinking about it quickly here, I can think of way to many variables that would have to be figured,, I bet you could come close to an average for yourself if you are like me and pretty much stick with one type of razor all the time

I know for 20+ years I re-freshed my two razors every 2 weeks like clockwork on my Arkansas stone without tape, I had no idea about "Honing" I just knew I got better shaves then a Bic...

I never wore out the razors though, I dropped them both eventually and broke them so I guess in the end it wasn't relevant

If you have the time to dig out that old german book on razor manufacturing you'll see that the angle they considered correct was something around 17 degrees (you'll get the exact numbers if you put in the ratios from the book).
On the other hand you can't have too acute of an angle or you'll be out of business. Most famously Hartsteel didn't seem to have thought this point through and the first razors they sold had huge ratio of junk - you can read the feedback on the forums.

As far as old sheffield razors, if the spine of a razor is softer than the edge it is not possible to hone that razor to shaving. It's a simple geometrical issue. Actually, if you're really persistent and have nothing better to do you could make it into inverse razor i.e. the edge is where the spine is.
In any case I've honed old razors to where the spine + bevel flats had to end up making 2/3 to 3/4 of the width - with modern fast hones it doesn't take more than few hours. But that's certainly not how these razors were designed to be - for example I have ~200 year old razors that have bevel narrower than what Dovo and TI ships you today from the factory.


The thing is that whenever somebody starts telling me how tape or no tape is the proper way to hone I just learn that there's yet another novice who isn't good with neither hands on experience, nor making up theories that describe things correctly. As long as one does not abuse his razor maintaining it sharp removes so little steel both from the edge and from the spine, that the razor is perfectly good for hundreds and thousands of years. The best advise I have for these people is to learn to hone properly and stop abusing their razors. Then they'll be fine no matter what they choose to do tape-wise.

Originally Posted by mrsell63

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Carl

My tape is .0057 inches thick. Just convert that to mm.

Jerry

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Carl

.0057 inches = .14478 mm

I get my tape from a store called Harbor Freight in packs of ten rolls.
I don't know if this store does business across the pond where you live.

Jerry

Carl,

From all the measuring we did in 09 we found that 16 degrees seemed to the mean,,

1mm seems close, the 3M #700 is .0056, we found that on a 6/8 razor 1 layer of tape changes the angle about .60 of a degree

As too off angle razors, yes we found some, but not many, and we also found abnormal heavy hone wear on the older Sheffield razor, dropped the angle, this is one of the reasons I have always thought they have softer spines and therefore are often out of angle...

Steel would make a difference but I doubt that most of the edges on Vintage razors are much different, I also think you are right that they didn't study angle in the beginning they used what worked well and it then the angles were figured later well after it was established... also if the razor you mention at 8 degrees and no hone wear it very well might have been honed free hand with the spine off the hone, or like another thread from 08 was written about maybe a spine guide being used on some of the really old true wedges /near wedges

All this however is just theory still it takes time to prove this stuff out..

My only object with this test, was much like the test I did with the pasted strops with the same razor..

Statements like these, although true are not relevant

Pasted strops round the bevel, or create a concave bevel,, Although true, even after 90 shaves and repeated overstropping with .50 and .25 diamond paste it did not show up..So it is not realative, the edge never failed from it within a resonable amount of shaving...

Using tape will take the razor out of the makers designed angle ... Although true it will happen, it won't happen in at least your lifetime, and maybe not your kids or grandkids so it becomes an irrelevant statement...


I wish more people, would do more testing, it really would help our hobby


edit: Thanks Jerry I just went an measured to be sure

To all you guys...

I love that there are other people that enjoy learning the finer details of our hobby

Carl

Glens math seems right to me – a 20% change in angle and an approximately 25% change in width (5/8’s to 4/8’s) coincide. Moreover, if my math is right, using Glen’s numbers, if you were to hone a mere 13% of the time with no tape you would have a perfect angle at all times.

It’s fascinating really! Better yet the more I read, the more I start to think that science is a bad measure when it comes to the voodoo that is honing. If for no other reason than it’s individuals at work here, and not every individual hones the same way.

Take for example the above information and think to all those razors we have all seen on eBay with worn down spines. By rights, many of them should have begun life as 11/8’s LOL!! As a matter a fact, after pondering Glen’s numbers I am starting to think that the vast majority (myself included) may be taking way too much off the spine when honing with no tape which could actually be worse - as others have stated.

As a guy who bought into the whole don’t tape camp, and just being asked by a friend how I like it, I had to admit that i missed only getting feedback from the edge when honing. Once you get used to the “slide” of the tape it’s quite easy to feel what the edge is saying vs. both edge and spine.

Thanks for the info Glen! More food for thought lol... sigh : )

Originally Posted by earcutter

think to all those razors we have all seen on eBay with worn down spines.

Whenever I see such razor I just move on to another which has had a competent owner

The problem with these things is that the razors are cheap and people are stupid. I imagine their thinking goes something like this: 'to make it sharp I just have to remove steel from both sides, it didn't get sharp, so I must not have removed enough steel'.
It doesn't occur to them that the edge is so delicate that it is not the amount of force, but the uniformity of the honing stroke that is the key to making it sharp.

So they completely ruin the edge in their first stroke and then follow up with thousands equally bad ones making it neither better nor worse, but just chiseling steel away from the razor and dumping the swarf into the drain.