Tam O'Shanter thread

[heavydutysg135]

A session on the DMT can really put some noticeable spine wear on a razor, and if you tape and then go on to natural stones you either have to keep the tape on throughout (an approach I really dislike) or if you remove the tape you've got to do endless strokes on the dalmore blue to make sure you're getting right down to the edge.

Your other option would be to take off the tape with the DMT, color the edge with a permanent marker, then hone on the DMT until the permanent marker is completely gone. Then you could go to your Dalmore.

Whereas when I had the Norton 4K I'd just tape at the low grits and take it off for the 4K, which made relatively short work of any resulting double-bevel but didn't seem particularly aggressive in terms of spine wear.

I also used to assume that the Norton 4K would quickly remove the double bevel, but after I performed extensive testing I found that this is definately not the case. Experiment yourself and I am sure that you will be surprised at how much work it can take to remove, even with the DMT 1200; the 4K would be even more work. To perform the experiment just set a sharp bevel with the tape on, color the bevel with permanent marker, take the tape off, and see how long it takes you to remove the marker all the way to the shaving edge. Unless you torque the edge into the stone while you are doing the heavy work it will take the same amount of spine wear to re-establish the edge whether you use the DMT or Norton (or any stone for that matter). The only difference will be the depth of the scratch pattern left to polish out of the spine when you are done

I have not found any natural stone that is good for bevel creation.

I definately agree with this statement.