Quote Originally Posted by RezDog View Post
The way it goes with creating the bevel and the perfect apex, there is no way to tell how long or how many strokes it will take. Also, with wedge blades you should flip them end for end to keep the wear straight and even.
Shaun, you mean when I get to the end of the stone flip the blade over on it's spine and then pull the blade towards me?

Quote Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad View Post
Yeah, as Shaun and others have noted, your bevel may not be all the way set. One thing that is often recommended here (though I don't think I have see it in this thread) is the need for a beginning honer to have a "reference edge" from an experienced honer to compare your own efforts to.

This really helped me out in the beginning, and before long I was outdoing the reference edges from a well-known pro honer (though to be fair, I would spend a lot of time tweaking and testing my own edges, and that pro honer was cranking out many blades daily just to keep up with demand, mostly finishing on a Nani 12 if memory serves-he just didn't have time for an extra hour of tweaking and testing post 12k!). Test shave with both in the same session after identical stropping regimens (that is assuming your stropping is spot on!), and feel how you're progressing. This makes a world of difference; we call them exemplars in the classroom when I show them the best student essays as models, for example.

Anyway, I would be happy to send you a razor with my best Norton 8k edge so you can compare apples to apples-no charge. I'm no pro, but I get excellent edges and shaves off the Norton 8k-just did one in fact. Or I could tweak it all the way on my Arkies or the thuringian/Escher I am currently getting great edges off of. Just pm me if interested. Or if you would prefer a real pro honer with an established rep, many of our members have done the same thing for others before. Let one of us know. Aaron/SHD
I might take you up on that! I sent a really old wedge blade to Glen. It might not be salvageable; if it isn't it would be great to have a reference blade as I have no freshly-honed blades around.