Thread: My First Razor - Need Opinions

Having done the exact opposite of Neil's suggestions, I'm inclined to second his suggestion. With this said, I'm kind of glad I did, in a way - it taught me a lot in a short space of time and left a lot of room for experimentation.

Of course, the problem with taken this road less traveled is that it is harder to navigate, cloaked with brambles and infested with feral wolves.

The Gold Dollar, unless it's had the shoulder ground down will require a very acute angle to keep the shoulder from improperly lifting the edge up on the hone, so I'm told. I have one that's had the shoulder ground and it hones normally, but it is a large heavy and crudely made razor. Be sure it doesn't have sharp edges especially on the toe that can scratch up your strop, but if you polish knives and swords you know what to do.

I came from knives myself and looking back on it, I actually think it was not helpful in learning to hone razors. My biggest issues were too little time on the stones and too much pressure for a razor as compared to knives I wondered why razor folks had much coarser stones than knife people, and it's because if you're restoring a bevel for example, you can't push very hard on the razor or the edge will flex. With a knife you can bear down.

Get a nice small JNat dedicated to razor finishing since you're used to them. One of our members, Alx, is Alex Gilmore who conveniently runs thejapanblade.com in Sonoma. He's a wealth of knowledge about razors, tools, and JNats.

Good luck and let us know how you get on, I'm interested to hear the experiences of another knife/sword person beginning to hone razors.

Cheers, Steve