Thread: Re honing

Hi,

2 days ago, my 6000 grit whetstone came in and I decided to sharpen my razor. I unfortunately held the razor at too high of an angle when sharpening. I did not rest the razor on it's spine. I got a very bad shave from it. Yesterday, I spent about an hour and a half honing the razor correctly with the spine down. I then shaved with it, but did not get much better of a shave. Now I know I'm only using a 6000 grit stone, but it shouldn't be this bad. My razor won't even pass hht when I FORCE the hair on the blade.

I'm 19 and can't grow a full beard yet. The only thick hair I have is on my chin and under my nose. Now the razor does a descent job at cutting the fine peach fuzz on my cheeks and even the thick hair under my nose where my muwtache would be, but it will not cut the hair under my chin. My gillete razor does a better job.

Now my qustion is this: was an hour of honing not wnough to correct the damage I did?

You will need a minimum 1k to set the bevel on that. I have dmts so I would go to my 325 to remove that amount of metal. You need some hones or lapping film to do what you need to do. Can you do it with a 6K? Yes but it might take hours, I don't know I haven't seen it. Use a permanent black magic marker to blacken the edge. Make 5 laps on your 6k. Whatever is still black is the amount of metal you need to remove. If its a lot, you will need that 1k.

My question: At 19, why are you wasting an hour of youthful virility honing a razor??? Oy!

Best bet is to send it out to a pro (SRP classifieds 'member services')

Yup, unfortunately while you can ruin an edge quickly with a 6000 grit hone, to reset the bevel either requires a lower grit (as Bill3152 suggested, 1000 is pretty much standard). Here's what has probably happened to your edge:

That's exaggerated, but you get the picture. Razors have an optimal angle at which the edge will cut hair effectively yet retain their sharpness (on left). A more acute angle will degrade quickly, and a more blunt angle won't cut hair. By raising the spine, you have changed the angle of your bevel like the second pic here. It is too blunt an angle to cut hair. And in order to get your bevel back to a good shaving angle, a lot of steel will have to be removed, i.e. everything outside the red in the third pic. Doing that will take a long, long, long time with a 6000.

+1 to Jimmy's advice of sending it to a pro. It won't cost you much, and will be worth every penny. When I started I shaved with a crappy edge for months and months. It can be a miserable experience and is well worth avoiding.

I would suggest ALOT more research before getting into honing on your own. Gssixgun and Lynn have several great videos out there that will take you through the process step by step. Even then it will take a good while to get the hang of it. It is more about feel than anything else and it takes time to learn how your blade and your stones communicate. It took me over a month of honing several times a day before I finally got consistent good results. Before you try again you are going to need a bevel setter and a finishing stone to get the results you are looking for. Shaving off of a 6k, while it can be done, just won't put as comfortable of an edge on a blade as I would like. As suggested above begin by sending your razor out to a pro for honing so you have a point of reference to what shave ready really is and use it as a point of reference.

Tha ks for all the tips. I think ai'm going to get a Norton 4/6k and I might send my razor to somekne more knowledgable the. I am if I can't fix this on my own.

1 question though. Would putting pressure on the blade speed things up, or would that ruin the new edge I'm creating?

A bit of pressure can be OK when setting bevels, but too much can obviously be a bad thing. One of the main goals when honing is to maintain the integrity of the (intended) geometry - full hollows can "flex" under too much pressure, for example, thus impacting on the intended geometry.

As others have mentioned, lifting the spine would have "narrowed" the bevel, and then dropping the spine back to the hone means there's more steel to remove at and around the change point where it angles in. A 6K might get you there with circles and short strokes and bit of pressure, but it will be slow going and require a lot of patience and consistent technique.

It's not impossible, just tedious. I used to set and even create bevels (for a long time in fact) on the Norton 4K. It was a chore, and you have to be patient. A lower grit stone is a lot faster and easier.

On the bright side though, if you do reset this bevel successfully with a 6K stone your stroke practice and muscle memory will be getting a good workout!

James.

Originally Posted by xdanisx

Tha ks for all the tips. I think ai'm going to get a Norton 4/6k and I might send my razor to somekne more knowledgable the. I am if I can't fix this on my own.

1 question though. Would putting pressure on the blade speed things up, or would that ruin the new edge I'm creating?

Now you're getting deeper into the more nuanced aspects of honing!

*Some* things require more pressure than others, but in general less is more. When you apply pressure to the blade you can deform it, changing the geometry of the thing. It can also lead to excessive and uneven hone wear, which can lead to an uneven and generally wonky bevel, which can require lots of work to fix, etc., and so on... all kinds of nasty things can be done to a razor by applying too much pressure.

EDIT: Jimbo beat me to it!

I'm prolly just going to send it out then. I've honed it for maybe an hour, an jour and a half with slight pressure and it's not shaving well. I used a sharpy to try and see how much I was cutting and it came off after a few strokes. The blade looks fine, it does not look like the second blade in the picture in Cangooner's post, it looks like the first.