Thread: Pressure!

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

I wanted to subscribe to this because I have a similar issue.

If you have areas that aren't hitting while you hone with fairly light pressure on the finer hones, what I would do first is double check that all the stones are reasonably close to flat. If this checks out, I'd go back to a coarser stone and work out the geometry issue you apparently still have.

You can use heavier pressure on a bevel setting stone, but before you progress to a finer stone, you need to go to very light pressure on the bevel setter and be sure you are still getting full contact all along the edge. If you don't have full contact at the lighter pressure on the coarser stone you need to do more light pressure honing until you do.

This is one of the reasons that using pressure is kind of a slightly advanced technique. To use selective pressure in such a case you want to preferably use a narrower stone and apply the pressure only on the areas you are already making contact - the purpose being to remove steel from those "high" areas so they are no longer holding the "low" areas (that aren't making contact with the stone) away from the hone.

Alternatively, if you have a razor that is way out of whack and don't want to remove a ton of steel you can use narrower stones for all the work and that will allow the razor to hit all along the edge a bit easier as well.

Originally Posted by eKretz

Alternatively, if you have a razor that is way out of whack and don't want to remove a ton of steel you can use narrower stones for all the work and that will allow the razor to hit all along the edge a bit easier as well.

Alternatively, you can correct your honing stroke on your current hones, rather than investing in more hones.

Draw a pencil line one inch from, and parallel to, the hone's edge that is closest to your honing hand. Now imagine that one inch strip to be your narrow hone. Focus your honing ONLY on that one inch strip exactly as if it only is a one inch wide hone.

Now that you have a set narrow hones, you will need to learn how to use them. When you do, your honing contact issue will disappear.

Originally Posted by Utopian

Alternatively, you can correct your honing stroke on your current hones, rather than investing in more hones.

Draw a pencil line one inch from, and parallel to, the hone's edge that is closest to your honing hand. Now imagine that one inch strip to be your narrow hone. Focus your honing ONLY on that one inch strip exactly as if it only is a one inch wide hone.

Now that you have a set narrow hones, you will need to learn how to use them. When you do, your honing contact issue will disappear.

I see this claim all the time, and no, that's not correct. On a razor that is crooked or warped, it will work just the same on the side of the razor that is shaped in a convex manner from heel to toe, but on the opposite side it will hit at the heel and toe only, and then will make contact with the toe and the part of the razor that is contacting the edge of the stone as it's drawn off with an x-stroke. The same goes for a razor with a frown but the problem will be on both sides rather than only one. The narrower hone doesn't solve this problem, but allows the amount of steel removal to be lessened before full contact is achieved.

Originally Posted by eKretz

I see this claim all the time, and no, that's not correct. It will work just the same on the side of the razor that is shaped in a convex manner from heel to toe, but on the opposite side it will hit at the heel and toe only, and then will make contact with the toe and the part of the razor that is contacting the edge of the stone as it's drawn off with an x-stroke. The narrower hone doesn't solve this problem, but allows the amount of steel removal to be lessened before full contact is achieved.

Then go ahead and buy a set of narrow hones and learn from them. Alternatively, draw a line with a pencil.

This is rather complex. There are a few things that could be playing into it. One of the things I would like to point out is that this is not standard going, it is restoration work, which is a little more time consuming and may take a lot of effort to get the apex back to meeting. Sometimes a wavy bevel is from the grind of the blade, authors it is from an uneven spine. Sometimes when the bevel has not progressed down the entire blade it is because you have to work the thick spots on the edge thin enough that the whole blade can make contact. Depending as to how you bread knifed the edge there may be a lot of material left remove. Finally pressure, or at least any amount of it is part of grinding and not honing, so once you have concluded the grinding the bevel back in place the pressure should be no more than in regular honing. If you continue to use pressure throughout your honing there is a high risk of getting a very chippy edge. If you are trying to get the entire edge to hit the hone at the honing stage you are better off with gymnastics than pressure.

Thanks for the quick reply guys.

I thought id go ahead and do pressured honing for a bit, followed by normal light honing on each stone.

Just had a shave with it and it turned out an almost BBS shave! (On my neck and cheeks that is as I'm growing a beard for now).

Cant help but think though that I've almost kind of cheated. From what you seem to be saying, i need to grind down the parts where there is a lot of hone wear in order to level everything up? Then that should produce a bevel that can be honed normally and not needing pressure to hit all spots?

You don't need to do anything. If what you are doing gives you a good shave, then by all means, stick to it. It could probably be even better if you were able to accomplish your final honing with very light pressure, but maybe that last %ile doesn't matter to your face; what might be considered acceptable or even good edges can be a very individual thing.

If you have heavy hone wear already I'd suggest maybe trying the narrow stone approach and do your honing that way. The narrower the stone, the easier it is for it to make full contact with a blade that isn't perfectly straight. That way you don't have to remove a lot more steel or make the hone wear really huge.

I can't think of a reason to use pressure on a razor, or any edge on that matter, other than save time on honing, as the particles dig deeper in the edge.
In that case, why won't you use a slightly coarser stone to do that? And you can also warp the blade this way, with frowns and smiles appearing out of nowhere, and on completely flat stones.
If you think that you need to apply pressure on your 1k stone, try a few more passes on your 500. For the rest of your stones, don't use pressure. The weight of the razor and your fingers/a finger, again without pressure on it, is more than enough.
That is for stones on the 1k or a bit lower grit. For the higher grit stones, pressure is useless. Have a pretty basic arsenal with a stone or two between the bevel setter and finisher, and with some experience everything works out every single time.

Edit; I forgot to mention slurry. If you need to speed up things, instead of pressure you can also use some slurry, usually made with a diamond plate.