Thread: Can t get my Boker Silver Steel sharp

Hello Everybody;

A little up date about my Boker.

After I posted in this forum I opened a thread on a Spanish forum to also have their opinion about the state that Ganiveteria Soto (the so called profecional with 85 years of experience) left my SR.

Everybody concurred with you. To my surprise it seems that is not uncommon to have this kind of experience. One of the guys got his US$ 350 TI ruined in the same manner.

In all that, the representative of Ganiveteria Soto appeared in the forum but his attitude was arrogant and was all about excuses. The only thing I wanted to hear is a sincere apology which I did not get. On the contrary, he was insinuating that I was not saying the truth. Any way, a very bad experience that made me decide that from now on I will learn to hone my SR´s since, here in Spain it is too expensive, to have them sharpened by ¨profesionals¨

My plan for this SR is try to fix it myself. I have ordered a set of Norton Hones 220/1000 and 4000/8000 combo stones. I ll have a go and if unsuccessful I ll have not loose anything.

Here are some more pictures and I would appreciate any advice. Thanks a lot.

This is one of those times I would rather not be correct in my estimate of said professional honing. I am sure it gives nobody involved in this thread any pleasure to learn the collective "we" were right. Very sorry to hear the final outcome.

Bob

I am so sorry, I don't know what to say.

What would it cost to mail it to the US for a trusted professional honemiester to look at/work on?

OMG I am so sorry, the hone wear is ridiculous. That's about what you expect on the spine after 100 years of service .... Brutal

Well it was an unfortunate outcome. But now lets be optimistic and take this as an opportunity to learn something and conquer this problem. Since this razor is already marred you don't have to worry about keeping it pretty so to speak. So you went ahead and bought those Norton hones, great you have a razor that needs them. Before you dive into this make sure you have a few things first get a magnifier or loupe of some kind 30x to 50x will be sufficient. Very important to get those hones flat so either use the flattening stone that hopefully came with those hones or some 320 wet and dry sand paper put on a known flat surface and grid lap them flat. Get some good quality electrical tape 3m if available and have it handy by the way the spine wear looks its probably going to take 2 layers but if you want to get technical you could measure the width of the spine at the wear point and compare that to the width of the blade it should be about a 3.5 to 1 ratio approximately to get a decent edge. Now I suggest studying the videos done on the Norton system by Lynn Abrams, GSSixgun and even Hibudgl all of them very helpful. I would even start a new thread in the honing section of this forum and see if the experience of the honing community can see you through this razor. Mentors those guys with orange user names, ask them questions, a lot of them will do face time with you on Skype this can help also. Sorry i'm so long winded, I have faith you can make this razor shave great again and I think it will be liberating when that happens. Enjoy your journey.

Thanks for the replay;

Yes, very unfortunate but if I tell you the truth, the attitude of the ¨honer¨ bothered me more that what he did to my razor....

I ll follow your advice Razorfaust and open a new thread. I will need all the guidance I can get for this project but as you said, I have nothing to loose.

If unsuccessful I will send it to the States for restoration.

Thanks again.

Well much have been said already. My guess is that the powerwheel honer ruined the edge by removing to much steel and give to much heat.

The second honer didn't do much better. You can't accomplish anything with a 16K without a proper bevel setting on 1k, then a progression to a finisher.

However. There's a small chance the razor can be restored.

Originally Posted by Icarusflies

Everybody concurred with you. To my surprise it seems that is not uncommon to have this kind of experience.

This shouldn't be surprising. Destroying a razor like they did yours is not done by an accident, it is a result of gross incompetence, so they would have done it repeatedly and destroyed many razors.

The problem is that they ground down the spine of the razor screwing up the correct geometry. The bevel angle in the current geometry is too steep and the steel can not hold a proper edge. That's why it may be 'sharp' but if you examine it under sufficient magnification it would be very jagged and would not shave well at all.

To make it somewhat serviceable you need to restore the bevel angle to the correct geometry - more than 15 degrees. You can either decrease the width of the razor significantly (I would advise against that) or build up the spine thickness which is doable with many layers of electrical tape. Use calipers and basic trigonometry to compute how many layers you need to add to get an angle around 17 degrees. It won't ever be as good as if you had the original metal, but it's your only option other than throwing the razor away.

Originally Posted by Icarusflies

Thanks for the replay;

Yes, very unfortunate but if I tell you the truth, the attitude of the ¨honer¨ bothered me more that what he did to my razor....

I ll follow your advice Razorfaust and open a new thread. I will need all the guidance I can get for this project but as you said, I have nothing to loose.

If unsuccessful I will send it to the States for restoration.

Thanks again.

Sorry for your loss. At least this would be honemeister showed his ass on the other forum. Happy honing, may your shaves be smooth and close from now on.

For your convenience there is an excel calculator that can be found on this page http://www.coticule.be/wedges.html
This will help you determine how much tape will be necessary to get a good edge angle. As Gugi mentioned no less than 15 degrees and I believe 20 is the upper limit, so 17 degrees is ideal.