Thread: Intro & Hello, also working to fix a big mistake!

Hello there! I've been lurking for a few weeks now, pretty much since getting a new straight razor as a Christmas gift. It's an "art of shaving" model made the T-I - the one with stainless scales (but carbon-steel blade -- go figure!). Anyway, I shaved with it for a few times when I first got it, and found that I really enjoy the "experience". But I noticed that I was getting some razor burn. Once I stropped it, it was worse. I suspect related to not being "shave ready" when I got it. I foolishly honed it on an extra fine stone I have, and stropped it, and was still able to shave, but was using a lot of pressure and a pretty steep angle.

At that point, I hadn't totally given up, but was considering buying a second razor -shave ready, and would send this one off to a hone-meister to be done right. That's when I messed up...

The razor slid out of the leather pouch, and hit my bathroom floor. When I looked down, I saw it had partially opened. When I picked it up, there was a slice mark in the side of the stainless scales, and a pretty good nick in the blade -- although I was surprized the nick wasn't more severe, considering how bad the slice in the scale looked. What was also odd -- I would have had to put a LOT of side pressure on the blade to get it to deflect enough to go anywhere near the sliced-spot on the scales!

Anyway, I ordered up a King japanese water stone -- the 1k-6k combo -- and lapped it along with my other sharpening stones. I used the bread-knife method to slowly take the chip out of the blade. This blade was not totally straight but has a slight smile to it -- which I maintained during the process.

Now I have re-set the bevel, and have been taking my time to hone on the 6k side of the King waterstone, with several re-lappings of the stone. I am using the rolling x technique to maintain the bevel along the entire smiling edge. But I am becoming frustrated at one thing ---- the blade is sharp enough to pop hairs easily at the toe and heel, and maybe 15mm or so along the blade edge from the tip and from the heel. But the middle part of the blade doesn't seem to want to get keen. I don't have a microscope or any way to look more closely at the edge, but the bevel looks nice by eye. I am not using any tape and did not use any during the bevel setting, either. I am trying to use light pressure since blade is 5/8 and full hollow, I don't think deflection is the issue. Can anyone give me some pointers? I can't seem to find much about how to get past this when I search these forums, and I have read the Wiki a few times over.

My feeling is that I need to get the entire length of blade sharp enough to at least shave some arm/hand hairs before stepping to a finer grit than the 6k. Also, I have not overhoned and have not created a "wire edge".

Is the middle or belly of the blade where the chip was? Anyway, it's possible that the belly of the blade is over honed rather than under honed. you might want to bring it all back to an even footing with a few laps on the 1k and then as you rolling x on the 6k don't spend too much time in the belly. I know this is frequently a challenge for me.

Welcome to SRP, Lou. Sorry to hear about your mishap. If it were me, I'd send it out to get it fixed. Check the classifieds for honemeisters. I'm a newbie, too, and the biggest problem I had was trying to get my razor shave ready when I didn't really know what a shave ready razor was. I got a shave ready Dovo for Christmas and the difference was unbelievable. I am getting another of my str8s honed now, so I'll have a rotation of two. I have five str8s I picked up in antique shops that I am cleaning up now. I'll get a couple of those professionally honed, then, in the next few months, I'll get some hones and practice on one of my $10 finds.

Dave

I don't think I've overhoned, and I have tried to go back to the 1k a few times as part of a bracketed honing approach, also have checked keenness periodically during the process. SO not thinking I have overhoned the belly,. but I can see that I should try to check.

Also, thinking the approach of multiple razors makes sense so that I can send one out and still have some to shave with... But no luck finding any locally, will probably keep checking the classifieds here for shave ready...

The bummer is, I would really like to get this honing down - I think being able to maintain my own razors is a key part of the whole straight edge razor experience.

Right now I'm just ready to shave with a straight - I've been using my Gillette DE safety razor and it just isn't as satisfying, simply put.

G'day & welcome LouT
Magnification will take a lot of the guesswork out of the equation. You can get cheap loupes or microscopes on eBay. 30X is good. Sitting here without a crystal ball is impossible to say if you've over or under honed the problem area but it's likely under honed.
You could determine underhoning by seeing if there is a glint off the edge under a bright light looking square to the edge but again magnification helps.

yeah, sounds like it's underhoned.
you need to stay with a coarse stone until the full edge is sharp
moving up to 4-6k grit stones is no good if the edge is dull.
as a start you need to get the middle of the blade to the same sharpness as the tip and heel.
use your thumbpad to check.

General ramblings-

Yes, learn how to do this stuff. You will flounder off and on, but it will come. You will feel real good about what you have learned.

Pressure and a pretty steep angle. A+ recipe for disaster. And razor rash, mixed in around the cuts. And that’s with a well honed edge. You want spine just barely off the skin, almost zero pressure on the edge skimming your face. Just barely raise the spine a little at a time till you reach the sweet spot.

Getting a (probably) vintage razor honed by someone who does it right is a great way to have a bench mark as you learn to hone your others yourself.

Smiling edges are much harder to deal with than straight edges, IMHO. I can get them HHT all along the length of the blade, but I don’t seem to be able to shave well with them. Others folks have no trouble honing or shaving with them. Just so you know that smiles are not just academically a little more difficult. You may want to get rid of the smile and move on from there.(since you are breadknifing already) Or keep the smiley blade until you have some more experience under your belt.

The 6000 grit stone is still a bit too coarse for a final shaving edge.

Wow, I get busy for a few days and forget to look back at my post, and next thing I know there's a bunch of additional advice - fantastic, thanks! The 30X examination sounds like ideal advice, along with going back to the 1000 grit until it is sharp on the entire edge before stepping up to the finer grit. I do have soft and hard arkansas stones, but not sure if they fall in between the 1000 and 6000 grits...

Either way, I am doing a couple of things right now, along the lines of advice given here.
(1) looking for a few lower priced vintage straights that I can use to learn honing technique - ideally one with a completely straight edge and one with a smile similar to the gifted razor. I need to restrain myself from going spend-crazy with RAD on e-bay!
(2) setting aside the new razor until I know what I'm doing, so I don't wear the entire spine off via honing!
(3) buying a 30x microscope. The Radio Shack one seems like it gets a lot of mention on this forum, but I'm not scared to pay 2-3 times that price if there's something a bit easier to use (allowing a view of more length along the blade edge, or easier to get and keep focus on the edge, etc.)
(4) sending at least one razor off to a honemeister so I can experience a truly shave ready razor (and also for basis of comparison with my own honing efforts. I'm near Boston so I am thinking I should look up Howard - he can probably also hook me up with any additional hones I will need.

This forum is awesome! Unfortunately I'm still shaving with my Gillette DE...

Ummm, I'm thinking maybe what you're calling a "smiling" edge is actually called a "warped" edge? Do you mean the the edge is curved? or that the blade may have been bowed somewhat when it was bent sideways in order to cut the scales? I think honing a warped edge is difficult and even a bit of a challenge for the more accomplished honers.

OK, I double checked and triple checked, the blade does not appear warped or bent at all. The smile is very slight but I don't think I'm having any technique problems - I am maintaining a pretty even bevel all the way across each side of the blade and including the ends where the slight smile is. I don't want to breadknife it into a completely straight blade since it is pretty new.

I looked it over closely under light, and I did see the glint across the entire middle portion of blade, so thought that the underhoning was quite likely. I also bought one of the $12.00 led microscopes from Radio Shack. Almost seemed like I could see the thickness of "underhoned" portion across center of blade when viewing with the scope.

So, I went forth to "reset" the bevel with the 1k grit hone. I lapped hone to flat before beginning, and put two layers of thin clear packing tape on the spine -- my thought is the slightly steeper bevel would make it more obvious to me as I honed, to determine if I am at a full bevel vs. underhoning. ( I had not used any tape during my original honing efforts.)

I could see a slight difference in shading (not to mention the courser striations from the 1k grit) when examining the edge with the mini microscope during honing with the taped spine. I stopped when my new steeper bevel completely overtook the old bevel, and went a bit more to try to get the entire edge sharp at 1k grit. It's sharp, but cannot shave hairs from back of my hand, except for the very ends of the edges (at the smile spots again). I keep reading that I should not move up to higher grit until the entire edge is sharp -- does this mean capable of shaving arm/hand hairs, or just sharp like able to cut paper like a well sharpened knife?

Next I stepped up to the 6k grit side of my King waterstone. Lots of honing and I can't see much progress either with the microscope or with my attempts to shave hairs from back of my hand. So now I'm posting here for more advice. I'd like to make more progress on this today since I have some time, but my only other stones are:
-one soft arkansas stone -- I have lapped it flat.
-one hard arkansas stone - not the one that is considered the finest arkansas you can get, but just generally named hard arkansas - lapped flat
-one Gatco "fine" sharpening stone, part of a nice knife sharpening kit I own -- also lapped flat.

I'm thinking I need to go to at least one stone that is between the 1K and the 6k, to keep from honing on this blade all day long, but I don't want to mess my blade up by accidentally going to one that's coarser than the 1k -- any thoughts or knowledge on the above described hones would be a tremendous help!

Note, to keep from being at a shallower angle than I should, after I finished on the 1k hone I removed the worn tape and put two new layers on the spine before stepping up to the 6k hone.