Thread: Pressure!

Originally Posted by trenchy

Hi all.

So I have this old sheffield I am trying to save.

It has had some funky honing (uneven bevel and hone wear on the spine) done to it (the poor bugger!) and I'm getting close to sorting it but I need a final bit of a push/advice from you guys.

So - first of all it had a slight frown. I breadknifed it on my Shapton glass 500 which took it down in no time. I did some circles with the spine raised until I got an edge that looked ok (I never seem to be able to set a bevel that cuts arm hair etc, even though once fully honed with the same hones, my other razors all come out sweet). So I markered the bevel, and went to my standard rolling x strokes. I kept going until all the marker on the edge of the bevel was gone.

By doing all this, I found a sharp edge (although at a steeper angle), then flattened out that angle to a normal honing angle. The only thing is, I needed a lot of pressure in certain spots.

All my other razors have never needed any pressure, and so what i'm asking is:

When do you stop using pressure? Everyone says that by the time you get to a 8k or whatever hone, you should be using light strokes, yet if I do that certain parts of the blade don't get honed by the stone (I know because it got to the point where I'm marking the bevel between every hone). Just let me say at this point that my usual strokes with light pressure have done the job wonderfully on all my other razors.

I could use lots of pressure to hit those parts throughout honing, but id rather ask advice before I do anything stupid or make the matter worse.

Any advice please? What do you guys do in this situation?

Thanks

Trenchy

Set the bevel, once that is done you have contact between bevel and stone on the whole length of the bevel as you draw your strokes. Once the bevel is set you start going lighter on the hones. You can still use some pressure on the 3k, but as long as you have bevel set it is just a matter of time to remove the scratches from the previous grit level. Synthetics are pretty quick so it does not take long to get to 8-12k after the bevel is set.