I think that, by pressing on the blade harder, it flattens out and makes full contact with the hone. When the pressure is relaxed, the blade springs back to its slightly warped shape and the contact with the subsequent hones is different.
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I'm no fan of forcing the blade in contact with the hone. As you experienced, once you need to back-off on the pressure on the finer hones, you're in trouble.
You are using the X-stroke, are you? Because that is absolutely imperative for dealing with this issue.
Drag the edge without any significant pressure over the bottom of a glass. This will dull the edge just enough to duck all sharpness tests, including the shave armhair test. Make sure of it.
Next soak the Naniwa 1K and start honing. The way to speed up the process is to stay on one side of the blade for awhile. Just hone back and forth, doing "half X's" with slight pressure, but not so much that it flexes the blade. Count the laps. Flip the blade over and repeat on the other side. (lets start with 30 each) Check with the TNT. Part of the heel and or toe should be responding. Repeat the single sided back and forth laps. Check again. Monitor progress. Stay doing this till the entire edge passes the TNT. Only then, finalize bevel stage with about 30 regular X-strokes. I second watching the bead of water as a guide for your stroke.
Should the warp be so severe that the regular X-stroke does not solve the problem, you can lap the narrow side of you Naniwa 1K, as narrow hones can follow a warp better than wide hones. In that case, you need equally narrow hones for the rest of the progression. You can hone on the side of a Norton 4K/8K combo stone, and consider it a 4K hone. But if you're without a narrow 8K hone, you would have run into a dead end. So I would try dealing with it in the normal fashion first.
Bart.
Bart:
Many thanks for your message. The Naniwas come laminated permanently to a plastic base which prevents using the narrow edge, so as you say, it is regular x-stroke (or a new set of hones) for me.
Regards,
Mike
Quite agree. I was getting p*ssed off and got a result that way that clued me in to another way to look at the problem, but I certainly know I was pushing too hard.
As an update, I mentioned my old Cerena razor, which I have had for many moons. It had a nick in the blade of about 1mm in diamater, right on the shaving edge. I spent about 2.5 hours on it, mostly on the 1K, and it's honed up just dandy. I've not shaved with it yet, but it's popping hairs left right and centre (or, rather, heel, toe and centre). I think therefore that the problem with the other blade is definitely some odd geometry, and I am reassured that I have successfully absorbed some portion of what you all have told me in this forum.
I'll report back with progress on the warped blade in due course. Ongoing comments very much appreciated.
I think a warped blade is probably the toughest things you're ever going to have to handle getting a razor to shave. Many people just toss them.