Thread: Flattening Glass Plate....

Have you ever even lapped a piece of glass to use for lapping film? Have you even checked a few to see if they were reasonably flat? I thought not. Maybe you should limit your utterances to subjects you actually have experience with rather than insults to people you don't even know.

Originally Posted by eKretz

Have you ever even lapped a piece of glass to use for lapping film? Have you even checked a few to see if they were reasonably flat? I thought not. Maybe you should limit your utterances to subjects you actually have experience with rather than insults to people you don't even know.

You sir are funny & you gave me a chuckle. Thank you My first impulse was to put you in check with your vast knowledge of honing, but then I would be bringing myself to your level.

Remember, for everyone you THINK you are smarter than...there are 10 who are smarter & more experienced than you.

Seriously? First, no one is claiming to be smarter than anyone here except I guess you. Knowing something that someone else doesn't does not make a person any smarter than any other, only more well informed. There is a big difference between intelligence and knowledge.

Second, your vast self-proclaimed knowledge of honing qualifies you as an expert on every piece of glass ever made also? If you honestly think that all glass, including the aforementioned glass tiles from big box hardware stores are flat enough to hone razors on without being lapped/flattened you should really go buy some and see for yourself. I'm telling you, they aren't. I've bought several. It's about half and half judging from the ones I've gotten, which is similar to what the OP found. If you guys want to hone on hilly surfaces go for it, I'll stick with flat. Just don't go proclaiming that all glass is flat enough for honing when it isn't so, for newbs' sake. Plate glass cut from larger sheets MAY be better, but that's not the point. The point is, check and flatten if necessary. A few hundredths of an inch - this is .030" BTW - is WAY farther out of flat than I would ever consider acceptable. By an order of magnitude.

Third, I don't care who you are or what you may or may not know, there's no call to be insulting here for any reason. Defending that behavior is as bad as participating in it, IMO.

To the newbs who may be reading this, the takeaway from all of this would be to check your honing surface before blindly believing what anyone may say, one way or the other.

If you ever wish to have any honing lessons or anything to do with a straight razor, please contact me.

Now you're making me chuckle. Chortle even.

Just some food for thought here really don't have a dog in this fight,, Don't really like Films all that much

It is an accepted practice to insert a sheet of paper under the final finish film or even the last two..

Seems to me that this would negate the entire theory of "How Flat is Flat" when you are intentionally introducing "Cushion / Flex" into the equation to attain a smoother edge..

Although I see where you're both coming from, not really in this specific case, as the amount that the "bad" glass plates were out of flat was far more than the thickness of a sheet of paper. Mine were close to .008" out as well as being very twisty. And the .03" - or almost 1mm (.039") that was mentioned as acceptable is nearly 10x the thickness of the average sheet of paper. For me, a .005" out of flat surface is the maximum deviation from flatness I would consider acceptable for honing a razor on, and only if it was a regular curve, not twisted or undulating.

Personally I don't much care for film edges either, but I did try them for quite some time just to give them a fair shake. Flatness is certainly more critical on stones if one must go from stone to stone in a progression. Otherwise the stone won't contact the blade in the same place as you switch stones. Not super critical on the coarse stones but more so on the fine stones that don't have the cutting power to reshape the steel. As the honing surface remains the same throughout a film progression it is certainly less critical but still not something I would ignore. Especially if the razor will ever be honed later on a stone, or as I mentioned earlier, there may be a good bit of extra work to do straightening things out.

Originally Posted by eKretz

Have you ever even lapped a piece of glass to use for lapping film? Have you even checked a few to see if they were reasonably flat? I thought not. Maybe you should limit your utterances to subjects you actually have experience with rather than insults to people you don't even know.

Hey eK
You are absolutely right. I have never lapped glass (unless it held booze). I shave with an old razor and hone it with an even older hone. I'm certainly ignorant on the topic of honing which is why I read about it on the forum; it is interesting. My remarks were snide and uncalled for. I apologize.