Hello everyone,

I have had this razor that I bought off ebay, in fact it was the first razor that I bought off there and at the time didn't know what to look for in a good razor. Anyways, the razor has been lying around for a year and I thought I would finally restore it. Except for the frown, the razor is in excellent condition.

I used the breadknife method on a DMT (with one layer of tape) in order to get rid of the frown and that worked fairly well. I used gsixxgun's video on blade restoration. In my ignorance, maybe because I felt that I didn't have to breadknife that much and wanted to preserve the blade as much as possible, I went straight to setting a bevel on Naniwa 1k. Needless to say, at 4k and 8k it wouldnt shave any arm hair.

So I went back to the DMT and attempted to set a bevel at that stage, gradually decreasing the angle. This time I used three layers of tape. I did a couple of laps, as well as used Honing a damaged blade - Straight Razor Place Library and followed the instuctions there. Then I removed two layers of tape and went to 1k and 4k. At 4k (and I think even at 1k) now I was able to shave off some arm hair. Unfortunately, as I progressed through the stones, the blade didnt get much better.

So I'm not really sure right now whether I should go back to the DMT and redo the bevel setting there, or I should go back to the 4k and refine the edge. If I shave off arm hair does that means that the bevel is set?

I am also wondering whether I should redo the whole bevel again and this time use a magic marker test, but Im not sure whether I can use that at the DMT or 1k level.

Final thing, I believe the blade was originally supposed to be meant to be smiling, and now I made it absolutely straight at the blade. If I measure the width of the blade at the center, it is about 0.02 inches less than the width at the heel and toe. I was thinking about going back to the breadknifing technique in order to make more of a smile, ie round it off at heel and toe, but then Im kinda worried that it would mess up its geometry.