TI Le Dandy honing headache

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.

Set it down and come back to it in a few days. I've had some fits with TI's as they are pretty hard and you can't use much pressure on them or you will be flexing the blade. As long as you are using tape, give it another go and see if the edge improves. I'm sure you will get it.

The spine looks to have a little wear as well and the shoulder is level with the spine on the pic you posted. Perhaps 2-3 layers of tape and trying to keep off the shoulder will help.

The bevel your setting also looks to be increasing to the toe, That would suggest your perhaps using too much pressure and or rolling the spine a bit too much. Or the spine has uneven wear and you need to account for that on the stroke.

Have you checked the blade geometry on some glass? If you have a nice flat piece of glass kicking about it would make your life a lot easier just to mist it and have a look through the glass at how the spine and edge are interacting with the flat surface. A glass out of a picture frame would work, Just remember that the tang needs to be off the edge of the glass. I have an optical lab block and do this with every blade I touch now because it'll show me a lot of the problems before I even start. If you add a bit of food colour to the water your using to mist then you should be able to see high/low spots.

Low spots will have a meniscus edge. It looks like the water is forming a bubble either side of the low spot.

High spots will show as a reduction in colour over the regular colour.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7351/...7d835cf72c.jpg

The spine is really quite messed up with loads of uneven spots. I swear it was honed on a 1" wide stone to look close.
Attachment 156583
Attachment 156584
I have hit the shoulder on my first few attempts last fall but avoided it since becoming a little more proficient.
The suggestion of three layers is a good one and I will try that next go. Never really used more than one historically but this spine may be worse than my other blades.
Thanks for the tip, need to find me a piece of glass..

I'd almost be tempted to cheat with that spine and use a spine clip.

http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/910/1...179910_592.JPG


I have no idea if it would work.... I might go pick one up tomorrow and test it on an RSO. It might not work so I don't advise you try BTW!.


Check your geometry. Then think about how to properly tackle it, You might find you can smooth the spine to re-work the edge. Or it might be a case of sending it out to have the spine reset by a honemeister.

The heel, the heel

The Heel needs to be Re-contoured and moved out of the way then see what is going on after you fix that

Thanks for the suggestions all.
I measured my blade and it's a 6/8 at the tip and 11/16 at the heel. So she has a real taper to the toe. Not sure if that's ok or I should level her out.
I gently rounded the heel area of the edge last night back to true as I bread boarded her against the edge of a barber hone before starting over with three layers of tape this time.
Attachment 156679
Shave today was ok, better than any previous attempts and i was able to go ATG without tears, but she's still not quite there.
She's a thick blade compared to most in my collection, but I do have a really nice wedge W&B to compare so I'm sure the edge is still not optimized..may all have to do with the mangled spine profile as three layers of tape really straightened out the bevel line.
I may have to put her away for a while and come back to her.
Thanks again for the great ideas.

Still more needs to come off the heel, that corner point will cut you. Round that corner with a diamond plate or low grit stone.

The razor looks like it has been put on a grinder or belt sander. Recently I spoke with a guy at a knife shop who told me they “sharpened” razors with a 1 inch belt sander, he brought out his belts to show me how fine the belts were. He proudly said he could put an edge on a razor in minutes.

You can see how much metal has been unevenly removed from the spine and the width of your blade. A Google Image search will show you how much steel is between the bottom of the Y and the edge and give you an idea of what the Heel should look like.

If the blade is narrower at the heel than the toe the bevel will never be even, the geometry is different from toe to heel. Heel bevel will be steeper and narrower, but you should be able to get an edge on it. Or you could breadknife the blade width even, something I would not recommend, you have lost a lot of blade width already.

I would try a “spine clip” either the plastic from a paper binder or a thin piece of plastic hose slit down the middle to make an artificially even spine. Some Sharpie ink will tell you quickly if you are reaching the edge evenly.

The bevel will be thin, but the size of the bevel does not matter as long as the edge comes togeather evenly. You should be able to make it shave.

But another good reason to thoroughly examine the condition of the spine and bevel for excessive and uneven spine wear and bevel before you buy. And then there is the overheating question.

It possibly can still be a shaver, though.

Great suggestion on the sleeve I think. Got me thinking of trying shim stock maybe or even getting a 1/8 or 1/4" brass tube and slitting that to try to cover the spine. Have some stock at work.
I assumed, (first mistake) that even though the toe is wider by a 1/16th the bevel lines should still intersect evenly, if the spine is true granted.
I bought this blade off the bay early in my hobby and was unaware of the subtleties yet, still am learning truth be told. Just read that the name was good and voila,, a hobby blade to keep me humble..
Most all of my blades since have been purchased from SRP members and the results speak highly for themselves.
Still a modest collection, and I realize I most likely will never find an Irish blade, nor be able to afford a good Spanish one either, but I am enjoying it nonetheless.
The honing and restoration component side of it, well that is a whole different learning curve. But also,, loving it..despite my gafs and bad buys along the path..
Good advise from solid members has kept my facial lacerations to under ten in total still, and all my fingers have recovered too, so I will keep calm, and carry on..
Thanks for the suggestions yet again all.
Cheers.

If you make a sleeve the edge will come togeather, I have used clear plastic hose. Yesterday at Home Depot I saw some hard white plastic line for refrigerator Ice Maker hook up and though that would work well for a razor sleeve.

The bevel will be thin or perhaps a double bevel but they will come togeather and shave.

I have several old TI’s and they are some of my favorite shavers. They don’t have to be perfect to be good shavers.

Make it shave.

To add to what Euclid440 has said you should be able to use some basic math to work out how wide the spine needs to be to set an angle.

If you know trigonometry this will help.

If you don't there are numerous calculators online to work out right angled triangles.

If you go this route you have to remember some basic rules in converting to a razor from right angled triangles.

First to make a razor into a RAT you have to theoretically split the razor in half. So you use a single RAT per razor side.

You already have the blade depth, but working in inches requires decimalised inches. This is harder than working in metric.


The basic route would be to measure the blade spine to edge. So if your razor is a perfect 5/8 then your metric value is 15.8mm.

You already know the angle you want for the bevel 18 degrees. You have to half this as you are splitting the blade into 2 triangles. So 18 becomes 9 degrees.

Here is a RAT calculator.


Right-Angled Triangle Calculator

Your Side b is 15.8
Your Angle A is 9

Therefore Side a (the spine) needs to be 2.5mm per triangle. Your using 2 triangles so the total spine width should be 5mm.


Now you know what sort of ball park figure the spine should be at to get a good angle you can test various materials to try build the spine using spine clips, tube, or sleeves to get into the correct bevel setting region.


The math also works backwards. So if you build the spine to 5.5mm you can plug that back into the calculator.

Spine = 5.5mm so, edge a = 2.75mm
blade width = 5/8 = 15.8mm

Therefore Angle A = 9.87 Multiplied by 2 for each razor side = 19.74 degrees.

A bigger angle = less bevel.

I think most razors are 17-22 degrees total bevel angle. 22 will be a smaller bevel than 17, I would aim for 18-19 degrees to be on the safe side.

The smaller the razor the more pronounced a change in spine width will change the bevel.

A 3/8 razor will change it's bevel angle with far less spine wear than an 8/8 razor will.

Quote:

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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.

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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!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shooter74743

Set it down and come back to it in a few days. I've had some fits with TI's as they are pretty hard and you can't use much pressure on them or you will be flexing the blade. As long as you are using tape, give it another go and see if the edge improves. I'm sure you will get it.

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Yes to what shooter said.

A look at your picture I see a fine old well worn blade.
My guess it has a bevel shape that matches the hone of the
previous owner.

Use the magic marker trick to see if your hone strokes
are touching the edge as you expect.

After trying this with tape try it without tape.
A magic marker test without tape should let you see
a thin as a whisker ink line and even bright steel
on the bevel.

Hard steel (yes ... TIs) combined with a fine hollow grind do flex
and distort the way the hone attacks the bevel. This in
turn makes hone progression difficult.

Use a magic marker that is easy for you to see and use a bright light.
Red and green markers work better for me than black....
I also use a 10x glass from time to time.

Looking at the wear in the photo I would start with circles
and a light touch. Circles seem to rock and give me an
even hone on worn razors. Well enough that I do not need
to "fix" a smile or other problem.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MikeB52

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

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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.
Attachment 157093
Attachment 157094
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.

Recently I was honing a stainless. F stainless by the way. I was on the 3k. I was checking the edge on arm hair. Every time I did circles it lost the edge.
Why? I got no clue. Point is some razors are just funky. Keep tweaking and playing. Some hate pressure. Some want to be dug deep into the rock and ridden rough. Some razors like rap music.

Well I tried this French blade out again tonight after taking her to the stones once more. Put more efforts into the strokes than before and used a good slurry on the 4k before doing a pyramid on the 4/8, than moving up to the 12k cnat with clear water but again, more down force than in my previous go's.
Attachment 157325
Attachment 157326
Anyway, might have been treating her like more of a lady than she wanted all along. That and the spine smoothing, 2 layers of tape and 100 strokes on a bridal leather strop at the end of it all gave me a good shave. Not a great shave, but a good one.
I also tried a little rap music, just in case.
Blondie - Rapture - YouTube
Cheers all, have a good week.

I would take it all the way back to the bevel setter. Get good and nasty at 1k and 4k. The rest is gravy.