Thread: One of THOSE days.

A play in one act.

Enter Zak, carrying 1810 French razor, two DMT hones, a CNAT and a Norton 4k/8k.

Zak confidently sets up the DMT 1k, tapes the spine and sets to work.

"Goodness me, but this bevel is shockingly easily set for a razor so old. And with such a wedge grind, even!"

He finishes the bevel set with some light strokes and takes it to his arm hair. The razor plows through very satisfyingly, but under magnification there's a small area near the point of the blade that isn't quite set.

"Ho ho, that little bit is a mite difficult, my tape keeps coming up. No matter! I'll just retape as needs be!"

After a little frustration with the tape, even the last remaining bit is clean and set and cutting hair.

Zak moves up to the DM8K and works that quickly. But that stubborn area wasn't quite as done as it looked. He doesn't let that bother him and just refines that area on the 8K. It takes longer, of course, but it works. Soon the edge is ready for the CNAT.

But there has been much retaping. Four times the spine has been taped. Each time layering on two pieces and smoothing them down to keep the water from getting in.

He sets to work on the CNAT.

"The diamond hone certainly left deep scratches. I can feel them on this stone."

He makes rapid circles and quick back and forths until the water slides easily, then looks at the bevel with his loupe.

"That's disappointing, it's still so scratched up! I don't remember the DMT being this bad before. This is going slowly enough, and this Chinese stone is so narrow, I think I'll switch to my less good CNAT just to get the bulk of this work done, then move back to the good rock when it's cleaner."

But the other Chinese stone has languished, being as how it produces scratches a bit larger than the Norton 8K, so it requires moderate lapping before it's ready to go. With a heavy gray slurry, he lays to it. Buffing the blade back and forth, making circles, using back strokes and forward strokes and rolls and scythes and every other kind of motion. He holds it up to the light and looks through his magnifier.

"Blast it all to pieces! There's almost no progress! Fine, I'll use the Norton 8k!"

After quite a lot of work, he examines the bevel again and sees, for the first time, improvement. There are fewer scratches, so now he really puts his back into it and scrubs that blade.

He holds it up again.

"Well, that's a good polish... Except it doesn't go to the edge! I should have checked the tape, as I clearly wore it down!"

Gingerly, he pulls up an edge with his fingernail only to discover that before going to the first CNAT he forgot to put a second layer of tape.

At this point he puts the razor down, goes into the other room and starts making fun of himself on the SRP.

end

Have a wade and butcher 1" near wedge that I came back to 3 times.... The blade was honed incorrectly for decades so I needed to grind the high spots down with a dmt... Took me 3 hours! Then it honed just fine but it needs the whole nine yards... 45degree heel forward x stroke with a slight rolling from heel to toe... I know how you feel..

Originally Posted by Heespharm

Have a wade and butcher 1" near wedge that I came back to 3 times.... The blade was honed incorrectly for decades so I needed to grind the high spots down with a dmt... Took me 3 hours! Then it honed just fine but it needs the whole nine yards... 45degree heel forward x stroke with a slight rolling from heel to toe... I know how you feel..

Every time I take a blade to the hones, I try not to bring any assumptions. Most of what I hone was made before 1860, so there's always something weird going on. I've had some that were just genuinely a pain to hone.

This one, thankfully, wasn't actually that difficult once I accounted for user-error.

There's a shaving edge on it now. Took about 15 minutes.

After I added the second layer of tape, so I could actually get to the bevel I set...