Thread: Thiers A.Gri//Olange - Restoration (pics attached)

Originally Posted by Euclid440

Nice work, you should reshape the heel, so you will not be honing on the stabilizer and remove the pointy heel that will eventually form a hook.

You should also tape the spine to hone, especially after all your hard work polishing the razor. Once you master honing, then decide if you want to continue using tape.

It looks like you use excessive pressure and laps getting the heel honed, (you were actually grinding the stabilizer) and ground the spine excessively.

The wear marks can be polished out, but you can’t put the steel on the spine back.

Thanks for the advice. I usualy use tape, I don't know why didn't I on this one. It seems it was a bad idea, afterall. Next time I will pay more atention to the stabiliser and I will lift it a little bit, if needed.
And, by the way, any (other) advice is welcome.

Andrei.

No, you do not want to lift the spine, if you do you will never get a consistent flat bevel and straight edge.

You have to reshape the heel bringing the corner of the heel forward as seen in the photo, I posted with the modification line, or hone heel forward to clear the stabilizer.

If you hone heel forward you can hone the edge, but it will do nothing for the forming of a sharp heel. Reshaping the heel is the only way to “fix” the problem. There are lots of post on correcting heels in the honing forum.

Hehehe, no, no, I got it from the begining. By "lifting" the stabiliser I meant to grind it till the point when it doesn't hit the hone anymore. Then it's nothing ON the hone but the spine and the edge, in a constant angle throughout the whole blade.
I had no intention to lift the spine from the hone. Sorry, bad choice of words, maybe. I'm not a native English speaker.

Off-topic, truth to be told, I an not really new to honing. I come from another hobby of mine, which is sharpening/polishing japanese swords. Well, coming from that, I thought, initially, that honing a straight razor should be a nobrainer, since almost all of them have that hone-ready geometry. You just have to keep the blade flat on the hone and you're good to go. No tricky free-hand honing needed, no need to adjust and modify the geometry on the fly, right? Wrong! Not entirely wrong, but the tricky part, for sure.

I learned pretty fast, the hardway, that it seems easier than it is. While honing a straight razor is nowhere near that hard compared to a japanese sword, still, it has its own tricks. Stabiliser problems is one of them. (now I got it, hopefully). Pressure and laps number are some others. I'm still adjusting those... Muscle memory can be a bitch sometimes. :-)

Bottom line, I am here to learn, I have a lot to, obviously, but I do know some of the basics.

Again, thanks a lot!
Andrei.