Thread: TI Le Dandy honing headache

Originally Posted by MikeB52

Hi gents, I too owe lots to the senior members of this forum for their vids, blogs, notes, and posts.
Learning from them I have been able to become a competent honer of most razors in my collection, with the exception of the above mentioned Thiers.

I have the atypical 1,4,8,12 k progression of rocks now and can build and maintain edges on hollow ground German blades, wedge sheffields, and Frameback Swedish steel without issue. But this TI 69 LeDandy refuses to get sharp/smooth despite my attentions.
Last night I started with one layer of tape and good slurry on the 1k. 3 sets of 20 circles followed by 100 x's and then again with dilution, up to 4k to do the same progression with less pressure, etc..
Then I replaced the tape and added a second layer and returned to the 4k and went back up through with mild pressure.
Under the loupe I can see the two micro bevels clearly and feel I should have a good edge, but my shave lets me know to the contrary sadly..
This blade is becoming as frustrating as mandatory French in grade 7 and 8 was!! Lol.
May have to seek professional help, but I'd rather go with to see how it's bested..
Any ideas?
Cheers gents.

Hi MikeB52 - I have a TI frameback #69 and a #19, both were honed by Valery, and each time he's honed them he's mentioned that the steel is particularity hard on these blades, and it took some considerable work to get a nice edge on them, and he's honed thousands of blades.

I'm sorry I can't comment on the actual honing procedure, but I know if Valery said they are "difficult" blades to hone, you're not alone in having some trouble.

Cheers!

Great, helpful replies gentlemen, thanks for the tips.
I can still spell trig, but haven't used it since performing weight and balance calculations for aircraft during yearly inspections.
Visualizing two triangles, and the resulting bevel line is actually a pretty cool way to look at it..
I was half considering taking the blade into work and strapping it to our metal milling machine and removing the spinal irregularities with a low speed fly cutter but have decided to try to level up the heel and spine some with a 325 and 600 grit stone instead, chickened out on the mill. Although, if I find another nice TI I can afford, may get new confidence to try more extreme techniques. Wonder if anyone has actually tried to use a mill to work on razors..
I read a neat idea Gssixgun posted about building a false true-ish spine with some electrical tape, grinding it down, then adding new layers of fresh tape over that. This also sounded like a great work around to a buggered spine so really I guess it's only for esthetic reasons I am trying to fix the actual spine now. That and some experience restoring sharp metal tools, of course..;-)
Will post some 'after' pics when I get the shape in better , well shape..
Cheers.

Originally Posted by MikeB52

....snip...
I was half considering taking the blade into work and strapping it to our metal milling machine and
....snip....

I am glad you backed off this idea.

I wrecked a couple eBay dogs attempting to true them up.

My current opinion is that a well lapped flat hone set will
eventually get a razor right. All I have to do is watch it with
the magic marker test and give it some hone laps to true it
up and then circles and X strokes to hone it for shaving.
After six months or so of maintenance it will come home.

My best shavers have smiles.

Tape helps a lot of things.... one or two layers....

What works is the right answer.

Results after taking the heel down some more and working the spine slowly on both sides on the stones as pictured. Tough to really get a clear spine shot.


Bevel seems straighter along the blades length, narrower at heel than toe after honing with two layers of tape, which I expected with the 1/16th greater toe width than heel. Marker test showed even line.
Haven't stropped or tested yet but will advise.

Nice contour on the heel. Looks good from here.