Thread: Suggestions for honing a smiling W&B with uneven wear

Originally Posted by Seguragr

Hmmm. Ok. Thanks for looking at it. I guess I'll set it to the side and forget it. At least it was a cheap antique store purchase.

Why not tape the spine and try to sharpen it? The heel looks the worst heel first X strokes should help to bring it back. What do you have to loose?

I actually decided this morning that I'm gonna try it. Worst thing that can happen is I ruin a razor that may well be ruined already. Now if only I could find my electrical tape.

Yea, give her a go. I was wondering why you would just put it away if an uneven bevel was the worst of it. It may not smile anymore but an uneven bevel doesn't mean it won't take an edge just looks ugly.

Bob

Well, it took some craziness with the tape, and a lot of time and patience, but I think I got it. The bevel is still terribly uneven (probably will never change) but I managed to get what bevel it does have to be clean of marker with a single sweeping x-stroke pass.

Started with the 220 side of my Norton 220/1000 until I got the bevel set and able to clean in a single stroke, then progressed up through 1000, 4000 & 8000. I stopped at 8k because I wanted to see if I was wasting my time.

Just gave it the shave test and it passed with flying colors. No tugging, pulling, hesitation (and no irritation).

I was also so excited to see how it would do that I totally forgot to strop it before I shaved. I imagine it would have been pretty good if I had remembered. I guess I will clean it up after all. This is going to be my ugly duckling, and the first recipient of my newb skills at scale making. Then I'll touch it up on the naniwa 12k and see how it does.

There you go, all is well the ends well in a good shave.

Bob

Originally Posted by Seguragr

One of these was a slightly smiling blade

It looks to me like this blade is frowning, not smiling. Am I wrong? A photo taken with the blade edge parallel to a tile grout joint, rather than at an angle to it, might help make the blade edge configuration clearer.

Originally Posted by Seguragr

if the uneven wear had already resulted in a smile at the toe of the blade, wouldn't adding tape there prevent the edge from making contact with the stone?

The tape goes along the spine, not on the edge.

I can try to take another photo today, but I don't think it is frowning. My impression of it is that it is slightly smiling.

And I am aware that tape goes on the spine. My concern was that tape would elevate the spine off the stone and that that would result in the edge not making contact with the stone when the spine is laid flat on the stone. Turns out I had nothing to worry about, but I've been wrong before so I'm used to it.

I think you've done really well to retain a relatively even bevel given the spine wear. Lots more use in that razor still.

So I checked it out and Tom apparently has a really good eye. It does appear to have a very slight frown in the center of the blade. I managed to take a picture which I can't upload from this app, so that will be coming later. Edit: uploaded picture.

Turns out I was also right and the toe does have a smile, though not as pronounced as I thought.

This definitely makes sense since the bevel in the center of the blade is the smallest and was one of the hardest parts to hone.

Now the question is, do I try to fix it, or leave it alone since I got the blade shaving sharp. I can't imagine it would take much to bread knife it. Of course I've never done that before, so it could be more work than I think it would be - not to mention honing it up again. But I do like to do things well when I do them.

So I went ahead and flattened out the razor, if for no other reason than that setting a bevel from scratch would be good practice. While the razor was full, I went ahead and unpinned it, cleaned it up, and just got done resetting the bevel. It's still a bit uneven, but significantly better than it was. I also managed to get this edge to pass the AHT at a 1k, which is something no other razor has ever done for me yet.

Now if only I would stop cutting into the shoulder.

All in all, great learning experience and I think it will be a significant improvement over the edge I had a few days ago.