Today's experiment. An annoyance and a revelation.
Today I decided to experiment a little with my new dremel toys so I brought out a razor I've been putting off dealing with. I played with a magnet I acquired from an old hard drive to secure the thing but it grabbed the blade much harder than expected. MUCH harder. In trying to get the blade off the thing I accidentally cracked a scale right through at the pivot. The scales are stuffed. While very annoyed with myself the scales in question were sun damaged and brittle so it was probably going to happen at some point anyway. I'm now resigned to getting a set of generic black scales to replace them, since that's all that was on this razor anyway.
Since I'd already done some damage I figured "stuff it" and took the blade to the hones. I've also been watching a number of Glen's videos and since this blade had some bad pitting on the very edge I thought I'd bread knife it as an experiment (if I had a coarser starting stone than a 1200 I probably wouldn't have, but as I said this was an experiment anyway). I got the blade nice and even quite easily and without losing a lot of metal so I was pleased with that and proceeded to hone it up from scratch.
It took ages! (thanks to the bread knifing I expect) I spent the whole morning resetting the bevel and working up through my modest hone set to finish with my 8K (don't have a PHIG ... YET). After checking with my loupe to make sure I'd gotten all the 4K marks out and popping hairs off my now bald left forearm (ok, almost bald inner left forearm) I stropped it and gave it a whirl.
First few strokes and I'm thinking "dammit! This isn't cutting at all!" I'm accustomed to the sound of my Playtpus (classic scraping toast sound and LOUD) and this barely made a murmur even though it's also a hollow. Then I checked the suds and felt my face O_O smoooooooth! AND shaving better than the Platypus! The difference between the feel of this "experiment", a Sheffield made item, and the Magnetic Platypus, an all German one, is like night and day! The German razor must be WAY more hollow in the grind or something but the difference was a real revelation.
Now I'm determined to replace the scales and get the Sheffield better honed. I think I'm falling in love with Sheffield steel! <3