Thread: Honing failure

So are you using “no pressure” on all your laps?

Looking straight down on the edge with your 30x loupe, you will see the edge as a grey blur, any spots that are not meeting will reflect light.

Once you no longer see shinny spots, the edge is sharp and will shave, though possibly not comfortably, needs more polishing for comfort.

This video will show you how to check the edge,

Here.

No blunting or wire edge visible under a bright light, no shiny spots visible under the loupe.

Not using any more pressure than the weight of my fingers to hold the blade down, should I be?

Yea the whole pressure thing is hard to describe to someone.

If you were going to touch up a razor that had been previously honed and the bevels were still flat and there was very minor chipping, you could hone the razor on your highest grit stone or barbers hone with just the weight of the blade X laps.

All you are doing at this point is re-establishing an edge, bevels are already flat and meeting just not completely.

To hone you do need some pressure, as you move up the progression you use less pressure until you are finishing with the weight of the blade, pressure.

This is what Iwasaki said about pressure, from the Jim Rion translation, it is a good guide. I have added the kg to lbs. conversion. Disregard the slurry stones and Monme weights.

(1) Coarse honing - Botan Nagura - 4 Kanme 500 Monme (16.5kg) 36.5lbs
(2) Middle honing - Tenjou Nagura - 450 Monme (1.65kg) 3.5lbs
(3) Finishing -Tomonagura - 45 Monme (165g).36lbs – less than ½ pound
(4) False Edge removal - Raxa hone - 45 Monme (165g) .36lbs – less than ½ pound
(5) Edge Finishing - Honyama Hone - Weight of the razor

So what does 36.5 lbs. of pressure feel like compared to 3.5 lbs.? Hard to say and not that important, what is important is the degree of pressure variance as the grit and finish get higher. The wrong amount of pressure at the wrong grit will just cause you more problems.

If you try to correct an edge with no or very lite pressure you will not be effective. Your problem now, is the razor has been on a 4k, so we do not know the condition of the bevel and edge. More than likely you will need to re-set the bevel and can easily do so on 4K. You should be very close to a shaveable edge and just need to get over the hump and ensure the bevels are meeting.

Make sure your stone are lapped flat and smooth and do 2 sets of 20 medium pressure X laps on the 4k, inspect the edge and if you see no shinny spots, it should cut hair and shave arm hair. If you see shinny reflections or it will not shave or cut hair, stay on the 4K with medium pressure, do 2 sets of 20 X laps more. Do not add more pressure, add more laps if needed.

Now do 2 sets of 20 lite X laps on the 8K, re-inspect the edge and do 2 sets of 20, just weight of the blade laps.

Strop 50 laps on leather and shave. Do not use the Diamond strop now. If it shaves well then try stropping on the Diamond and see if there is improvement.

I think the point that might be getting missed here is that the razor was sharp, used 8 times, and then put away. It should only need a light touch up unless the edge was rolled during stropping.

Originally Posted by Utopian

I think the point that might be getting missed here is that the razor was sharp, used 8 times, and then put away. It should only need a light touch up unless the edge was rolled during stropping.

Ron,
8 years after last use, may be the memory of the razor sharpness is not as fresh. Could have been a better factory honing job, but we know those are usually inadequate. I wish the OP could show some pics of the bevels at decent magnification to get better idea at what is going on.

Originally Posted by mainaman

Ron,
8 years after last use, may be the memory of the razor sharpness is not as fresh. Could have been a better factory honing job, but we know those are usually inadequate. I wish the OP could show some pics of the bevels at decent magnification to get better idea at what is going on.

Yup, that is an excellent point that I don't think I ever would have imagined.

The OP said he had been doing 4/8/K pyramid laps and stropping on Diamond paste, in an attempt to revive it. He says the bevels are meeting, but will not shave arm hair, think we are beyond touchup, time to re-set the bevel and start over.

Originally Posted by Euclid440

Y
Make sure your stone are lapped flat and smooth and do 2 sets of 20 medium pressure X laps on the 4k, inspect the edge and if you see no shinny spots, it should cut hair and shave arm hair. If you see shinny reflections or it will not shave or cut hair, stay on the 4K with medium pressure, do 2 sets of 20 X laps more. Do not add more pressure, add more laps if needed.

Now do 2 sets of 20 lite X laps on the 8K, re-inspect the edge and do 2 sets of 20, just weight of the blade laps.

Strop 50 laps on leather and shave. Do not use the Diamond strop now. If it shaves well then try stropping on the Diamond and see if there is improvement.

I did the 2X20 on the 4k 3 times, testing after each one and it does not appear to be getting any sharper.

Here is the blade though you probably can't really see anything with these crappy phone pictures.









Maybe it's time to dig out my 1k stone from my Edge Pro.

I can't tell if I see a frown on the edge. Place the razor edge down on the hone and hold it up to a bright light and see if can see any light coming through. It should have a very slight smile and not a frown

Ok, some significant progress. I decided to do the Sharpie test. 2X20 on the 4k. The bevels are clearly getting ground and look pretty damn even, but it still wasn't really shaving my forearm hair much better than when I started. So I stropped the hell out of it and then did 2X20 on the 8k with light pressure and then another 2X20 on the 8k just the weight of the blade on it. Then stropped it some more. It is now shaving, my left forearm is almost bare. Tried the hanging hair test and while I had to tap the hair on it a bit to get it to work, it did in fact cut the hair.