Thread: Can t get my Boker Silver Steel sharp

Originally Posted by gugi

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.

Also, to add to the problems I have noticed that the bevel is not symmetric.

As I said before, I have nothing to loose by trying.

Originally Posted by Razorfaust

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.

That will be very helpful, thanks a lot Razorfaust