Thread: Honing Hump - never the twain shall meet

Hey all-

I decided to wait at least till I got through a few razors of varying types to ask a couple honing questions, so here it goes. First appreciate all the help so far from everyone, there's no way I'd have gotten this far without it.
Here's what seems to be my deal:
Got a small nick in the toe of my Ralf Aust, took it out on the stones (can't even tell now), took it to the 1k Naniwa to make sure I had a good bevel, and then all the way up through the stone progression. Shaves like a champ.
Now go to two old razors from ebay. One had enough small nicks that I breadknifed until totally dull (I was curious if I could bring it back from this state too). I worked it on the 1k till it was then cutting arms hairs. Finished the progression, CrOx, strop, and got a lousy shave. Maybe the bevel wasn't really set? Started over and 1k and tried again to no avail. Similar with the other ebay razor, I can pop arm hairs but can't seem to finish the job to a good shave.

So it seems like I can either get a super nice edge on a newer razor, or I can (I think) set a bevel from scratch, but can't do both. Do you think it just may be that the older razors have problems I can't detect? I'd like to take a newer razor down all the way and see if I can bring it back, but can't bring myself to do that to my awesome Aust.

Side note: It seems like it took me forever to set that bevel from scratch - maybe 20 minutes on the 1k. That normal?

20 minutes is not too long for a bevel. It can be 5 minute, all depends how far you need to go. Regarding old razors, many have been sharpened spine off the hone, with tape, who knows how. You have to even that all up. But once you set it, you wont have to do that much work again. Your experience is very common. Magic marker test tells you a lot. Whatever black remains will tell you where the blade and hone are and how much metal needs to be removed.

Breadknifing, "the nuclear option", makes it very difficult to get it back to shaving sharp IME. It can be done but it just requires a lot more work. If you have magnification check out the bevel. Also do the marker test to see how your stroke is working along the whole length of the blade. It might just need more on the bevel setting to get to the point where it will respond on the higher grits. Hard to say precisely without seeing it firsthand, but that is just what I'm thinking.

Usually we execute breadknifers. But since today is August second we'll give you a break.

That maneuver is for the well experienced honers who know when to stop. You just create a lot of extra work for yourself and sometimes you really need some finesse to get the edge back. certainly there are times when bread-knifing is appropriate but as far as I'm concerned it's for ocassions when the edge looks like this:

Thanks for the input. I do realize now that I could have probably taken out all the chips (they were only really visible under a loupe) without bread knifing. If it's any consolation it only took a couple strokes to get those out! Haha.
Another thing I notice is that when I set the bevel, I end up with a much wider bevel than a nice small one when it starts out. Maybe too much pressure?

It may have been honed with tape or spine off the hone. Wide bevels wont affect the shave though.

Bread knifing might have altered the overall geometry a bit, like shortening the width, leading to bad overall contact from spine to bevel. To me twenty minutes is inadequate. I would continue honing and examine the bevel a bit. You also might not have spent enough time on a polishing grit along the way. It's hard to equate honing skill based on two razors because each razor is very different. I wouldnt let 20 razors influence my honing skill, let alone 2. I honed about 250 razors before I started to conclude that I might know how to do it.

Yeah I wish I had a huge pile to go through to get better. I'll keep it up.
I'm definitely going to do the black marker. I used to do that with knives - don't know why I didn't do that here.

Update:
I took several of Glen's recommendations-
- Walk away for a day
- Put two layers of tape vs. 1
- Varied pressure a little based on where I saw the bevel forming

Got hairs to pop really good at 1k, then went though stones and stropped. What a buttery smooth shave. Feels good to get that success and bring a $20 razor back to life. Many thanks to all for the advice. On to the next one!

It really is alot of work to bring a 'knifed edge back to bevel. I'm still not settled on what I want to use - but definitely something more coarse than a 1k. A 2-300 grit would be attractive