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Honing - "Look" before you Leap
One of the first things I do before I even touch a Hone is LOOK at the razor..
I make sure of course it is in good repair, that the pins are tight, so they are not flopping around when I try to hone and strop the razor that there are no cracks, I check to see that it closes centered .. Nothing worse then spending all the time honing then to slam the new fine edge into the side of the scales :(
I do BOTH versions on the TNT to check the integrity of the edge, and feel for issues, this is just something that should be second nature..
a. TNT running the edge of the razor down the thumb nail to feel for the condition of the edge, feeling for sharpness and roughness
b. TNT running the side of the bevel down over the thumbnail to create a small bulge in the bevel of a Hollow Grind razor, this will revel and hidden cracks, and often will let you feel for pitting in the side of the bevel..
A quick check for the condition of the overall shape of the edge can be done by holding the razor up and sighting against a bright light or window, turn the razor so it goes Black against the light so you are looking at the silhouette it can show a frown really quick.. (yes that is snow out there, we got a dusting last night)
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So can looking at the edge above a known Straight Edge , but the Silhouette trick is faster and you don't get the uneven bevel error in there.. If the bevel is uneven it can deceive your eye into thinking there is a frown when there isn't..
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Here is a progression of what evaluating an edge looks like
I start with just the Mark A-1 Eyeball to see what there is to see
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Look closer
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Do you see it ???
At 30X everything become clear, you can of course go much higher if you want, I have just never found any advantage to anything much higher then 40-60X myself... You can of course see in these shots that the bevel is uneven on this razor.. You would obviously look at both the front and the back of the razor bevel..
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This is just a AOS TI that is the first one across the hones this morning so I decided to take some time and do pics while I did my testing hoping that it might help if you see what I see when I look at a razor BEFORE it hits the hones...
So what is your diagnosis of this razor ???? what issues do you see ???
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Next step: About 40 Circles per side
Cleaned the razor using MAAS and a cloth :)
Some of what was on there was simple staining most came off, obviously you want to do this BEFORE honing :)
So taking it to the next step,, these are at 60X and taken after doing circles only on a Chosera 1K, no X strokes.. The Point needed to be corrected on the DMT 325 with some light draws to fix the dinger,, Look really close at this pic and the ones above and you will see the crack above the point... It is out of play concerning the edge so I am proceeding.. There was no damage from that to the spine that was just staining..
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that is just a cloth fiber above to the left, not a crack :)
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You can see in this Heel pic the beginnings of a Heel Hook, that will also need to be taken off with the DMT 325 but I will finish setting the bevel before doing that..
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The very slight frown will most likely come out during this honing cycle, because I will hone "Toward a smile" it should take that out gently and completely without having to get drastic either on this honing cycle or the next.. As you can see it looks like the uneven bevel is coming out gently also, that is something that may or may not come all the way out on this cycle, however an uneven bevel does not effect shaving in any case...