Quote Originally Posted by blockhead View Post
It looks as though you have rounded and smoothed the area on the spine that has been flattened by honing. I have seen a few razors that had wear like this, maybe a bit more aggressive, and passed on them. Does that do anything to throw off your angle when honing the blade, or can you just compensate for the lack of thickness by applying tape? I am just trying to grasp what makes a blade salvageable for use and what makes it a paperweight. Is it possible for an old blade to have so much wear on the spine that you can't hone it properly? Or am I overplotting this?

You are simplifying it...

But in answer to the direct questions
First, the width of the spine has hardly changed from when it came to me... just the contour changed..
Next one I will measure it and see what the real change was...
Second, these razors always need a complete bevel re-set so the two minute changes would offset each other..
Third, You are reading to much into bevel angle, there is actually a thread on here that I started so we could get some real numbers on vintage razors... Personally I have measured angles from 12 -22 degrees... 3M electrical tape changes the angle about .65 degrees on a 6/8 razor so that requires quite a few layers of tape or quite a bit of steel removal to change the angle outside of usable paramerters...

As to what is salvageable, look at the overall contour of the blade too, not just spine wear... and whether the spine wear is even, and the edge is even....
The worst thing is uneven Toe wear, or a Frown, both of those cost steel to fix right...

Hope that helped you...