Thread: Smiles and Frowns

What does it mean when the blade of a razor has a smile or a frown? Are these razors okay to purchase, or just a waste of money if planning on using them, and not as display?

Smiles and frowns are curvatures on the edge. In the case of smiles, sometimes by design. Both frowns and smiles can be the result of poor honing. A smile would look like a happy face and the frown like a sad face. In other words, the smile would like like a belly protruding from the center of the edge (convex) and the frown, would look like a depression in the center of the blade (concave). Many people like smiles. Smilies are harder to hone but look great. I do not know the first frown that people like ;-).

Al raz

Originally Posted by LERigney

What does it mean when the blade of a razor has a smile or a frown? Are these razors okay to purchase, or just a waste of money if planning on using them, and not as display?

Do they require a different technique to strop them?

a smiling blade doesn't need any special techniques really for stropping, but honing can be a different story...

a frowning blade on the other hand, well I'll just say that I would hone the frown out before using it. I'd rather my blades be happy than sad

I could be wrong about this but I always thought a frowing blade was only from bad honing. It seems I remember reading somewhere in here to be very cautious of them because they can be very difficult to repair, if not impossible. I would think it depends on how much of a frown. A frown is when the blade is narrower in the middle of the blade than on each end. One of my best shavers, a wade and butcher, has a smiling blade by design and I love it.