Thread: The Mysterious Missing Slivers of Edge

I should have gotten in on this thread earlier. I have had a couple razors with similar problems as of late.

Yes, something happened to me the other week. It could be relative. I had been trying to get an all-natural thing going for old stuff strictly. I set bevel on 1k Nani, but go to my 'gnomestone' which I figure is about 5/6 k and on to bbw/coti. to the Escher. I have had some success, but one out of 3 I have to go back to the 4/8 and do my thang. I have a Greaves which is in fine shape, but did not shave as I desired. As I went back to the hones, I saw ....YES! A tiny sliver of the very edge missing in the middle of the bevel.
Wondered how that happened! Went to 1k and got it smoothed out, 4/8 and on to the finisher. So far so good.
Now, I wonder if I had gone too long on the gnome and BBW, which are pretty close in grit. Never felt anything, Never had this before. Funny thing about going outside of what we know works most every time and trying something new.
Sometimes it works, sometimes not!
I suppose the moral is that there is no substitute for 'bridging' that gap on some razors?

I have two razors in particular that have been giving me some trouble. And in general, I'm finding that when I have these problems that its with harder steel. The two in question at the moment are a newer TI and a Original Schulze INOX. The problem is that the edges are not holding well. So I did the usual tricks of adding a little more tape to the spine. That helped some. But I'm also finding that going right from 1k, 4k,8k that the edges are having more trouble than if I go up to 12k or even 20k then back down to 8k and up again. The initial polishing on the first round is doing very little for the edge but the trip back to 8k and up again seems to make the transition slow and even enough to keep the edge more stable. So I have gone from 1k up to 20k, then back to 8k and up to 20k, and finally 12k and 20k. I emailed Stefan about this and he said he had similar success but felt that the edges in question for him were bevels not fully set. And while that makes perfect sense, I think my issue is that the edge has been crumbling and causing the same effect. I don't have this 100% sorted out yet but the experiment seems to have yielded some results. Both of them look better under magnification and they seem to have better edges than when I started having trouble. They both need a test though to confirm. The interesting thing is that it seems to be only very hard steel that gives me this trouble.

Originally Posted by OCDshaver

I have two razors in particular that have been giving me some trouble. And in general, I'm finding that when I have these problems that its with harder steel. The two in question at the moment are a newer TI and a Original Schulze INOX. The problem is that the edges are not holding well. So I did the usual tricks of adding a little more tape to the spine. That helped some. But I'm also finding that going right from 1k, 4k,8k that the edges are having more trouble than if I go up to 12k or even 20k then back down to 8k and up again. The initial polishing on the first round is doing very little for the edge but the trip back to 8k and up again seems to make the transition slow and even enough to keep the edge more stable. So I have gone from 1k up to 20k, then back to 8k and up to 20k, and finally 12k and 20k. I emailed Stefan about this and he said he had similar success but felt that the edges in question for him were bevels not fully set. And while that makes perfect sense, I think my issue is that the edge has been crumbling and causing the same effect. I don't have this 100% sorted out yet but the experiment seems to have yielded some results. Both of them look better under magnification and they seem to have better edges than when I started having trouble. They both need a test though to confirm. The interesting thing is that it seems to be only very hard steel that gives me this trouble.

Seems a a lot of variables there, but being modern hollow grinds, neither of those should need more than one layer of tape. If you go with 2 layers on stainless, it could be a little pain to bring it back to one. Some are certainly hard to get the bevel set and tend to take more honing, FME.

OK, to write the read by no one epilogue, here is what finally happened to the missing chips on the Greaves. Establishing that the 5K Chosera was a potential problem I flipped the hone and lapped the 'back' side. I honed the razor Chosera 600 (for a blank slate), Chosera 1K (bevel set with 2 pieces of tape throughout), 3K, flipped 5K, and waited for the Naniwa 8K to arrive. Then on to the 8K and the 12K Naniwa. Here my ADD kicked in and I simply carried on to the SG 20K. I forgot it was suggested I stop at 12K. This morning the first shave, a 2 pass modified. My reward, a sweet looking bevel and honestly, the first time I had zero burn from the Alum, in short, a super comfortable shave with my favorite razor. Really this thread has been fun and part of the reason I keep coming back to SRP, the combination of deep knowledge, great photography, and goofy fun.

I'm glad you finally got that Greaves squared away. It would be a pity not to have it up & running. A happy ending with the moral of the story being when in doubt buy more rock. A message we all can get on board with.

Originally Posted by WW243

OK, to write the read by no one epilogue, here is what finally happened to the missing chips on the Greaves. Establishing that the 5K Chosera was a potential problem I flipped the hone and lapped the 'back' side. I honed the razor Chosera 600 (for a blank slate), Chosera 1K (bevel set with 2 pieces of tape throughout), 3K, flipped 5K, and waited for the Naniwa 8K to arrive. Then on to the 8K and the 12K Naniwa. Here my ADD kicked in and I simply carried on to the SG 20K. I forgot it was suggested I stop at 12K. This morning the first shave, a 2 pass modified. My reward, a sweet looking bevel and honestly, the first time I had zero burn from the Alum, in short, a super comfortable shave with my favorite razor. Really this thread has been fun and part of the reason I keep coming back to SRP, the combination of deep knowledge, great photography, and goofy fun.

Mo rocks ,mo fun.
I did a wedge with the 20k the other day & it liked it better than the naturals I usually use. Go figure .