Thread: weird hone wear

I have a razor that i really want to become one of my daily shavers, the only problem i have is that I cannot get the blade to sit flat on the hone.
I don't think the blade is warped, i think it is a case of bad honing on the part of the previous owner.
The only way that the blade and spine make full contact with the hone is if the tang is on the hone too, which make me think that a previous owner was honing the blade like this. It has left the toe of the blade slightly thinner than the heel, and also the hone wear on the spine is greater at the toe.
I was looking forward to using this razor, but now i feel it may be a scrap job. Anybody experience this in the past, or have any advice that could fix it as I don't want to throw the razor out.
Thanks
Nick

3 options that I can see:
- hone it like the previous owner did
- regrind it yourself on waterproof sandpaper or coarse stone to create a new edge and bevel.
- send it to e.g. Joe chandler for regrinding.

Could you post some pictures to show us how bad it really is?

It doesn't really show up on pictures well, i only have my phone to take the pictures so the quality isn't good enough to see much. The difference between the width of the blade at the two ends is 1.5 mm, but i did not realise anything was wrong until it wouldn't get sharp. You can see the end of the blade has a lot more polish on the spine and a much wider bevel too. I'm worried that honing it out will leave the blade much thinner, and if i continue to hone as it has been done, then i will learn bad habits. Maybe it isn't so bad as i thought though, i don't know. I can always save it if its too much of a project and try when i have more experience.

It looks to me like that razor was honed for a long time with more pressure on the toe than at the heel. I see a lot of razors like this--not sure why, exactly.

I think you can learn to sharpen it without developing bad habits. Take a permanent magic marker and color the entire bevel on both sides with it. Then do your honing strokes, stopping every few strokes to check how the marker is wearing away. The goal is to wear the marker away evenly along the entire edge.

As long as you're not applying too much pressure at any one point in the stroke to compensate for the weird hone wear, you shouldn't develop bad habits. Just remember that this blade is atypical. When you get a normal razor you'll have to make some minor adjustments to your stroke to get it honed.

Good luck,
Josh

That blade has a definite "frown" shape. It has had more metal removed in the middle than on the ends. it looks like it was honed on a classic barbers hone using the X pattern for a long time. There is a way to even it out but you would be spending a bit of time to do this and the end result may not be worth it. If it were my razor I would just set it aside and buy another, better razor.

This is a good remedial job to get some experience on. Or send it to Lynn!

So, i got rid of most of the frown, its still slightly uneven, but I figured i can attack it again if it annoys me in the future.
I spent a while on 1500 wet paper, which helped lots.
It took a lot on the norton to get it sharp afterwards though. I shaved this morning with it and it performed as good as any other razor I have sharpened(I don't really know how sharp they are as i have nothing for comparison) and the shave was quite comfortable.
Sorry again for the bad quality of the photo.
Thanks for all the advice
Nick

That looks passable. Good work!

Josh

That's good progress, visible to the naked eye, even from the phone cam. Well done.

X