Thread: honing slump

so today i actually went to my collection of razors that i have honed myself and tried ALL of them out to see if they were working, and to confirm to myself that i can hone a razor to shave ready!

because at the moment any razor that i attempt to hone seems to stay rather dull. ive tried oil stones, watre stones going up grits, down grits, doing laps on wet and dry on a lapping plate. i went through and watched more of gssixgun's videos and still am struggling to make the with the last few razors in my collection shave ready.



My current problems are:



Wade and butcher wedge: i have dropped to about 600grit to try and remove enough metal to set the edge. while looking at it with a loupe while the razor is on the stone, all of the edge touches but i can still see the flat edge and how much metal i still need to remove. so far it has only been one layer of tape, but i am contemplating moving to two or three layers even. once i go up a layer is it difficult to bring it down a layer? will it drastically change the end shave results?

Joesph worstenholm EBRO Wedge: had to find clean metal on this one but once i did everything looked great, went up my progression and it's still like shaving with a spoon.


A bostwick hollow ground- its quite narrow and long but has a fair smile to it. not a clue whats this razors problem, been up and back my progression so many times its not funny. not sure what to do with this one. any suggestions on techniques or ideas are welcome!


Boker Zenith hollow ground: finally found clean metal on 1000g (a very narrow strip) is there enough of a smile to warrant rolling x strokes?


i don't think that wedges are my problem, i have a couple of b j eyres honed and a couple of dubl duck wedges that are brilliant shavers.

all with one layer of tape, hones are 600 oil, 1000 water and oil, 3000, 4000, 8000 all water, duro barbers hone

any help would be appreciated.

Just to clarify, what you are doing is part of restoration honing and not part of regular honing. It can take near forever to get a bevel where none exists on an old wedge. What I have done a few times is to start with the edge slightly elevated in an attempt to get an apex, then to three layers of tape and then two if the bevel is small one. I am not sure if it is any shorter of a time or not but it feels like I am doing something. It also gives me a bevel that is narrow and slowly getting wider. It Also provides points to straighten the bevel if is starts to get wobbly and if I am unhappy with the width of the bevel if I start with one layer of tape I have to polish it out and start again or be happy with the very wide bevel. I rarely drop below 1K simply because I feel like it takes longer to get the 600 stria out than if I went 1K to start with, but potato, potato. You need to put them away when they are starting to make you crazy and come back later. The bevel set is the creation of that perfect apex that is the finished edge once it is polished. As you move up in grit not a lot changes with that edge other than the polish. Sometimes you need to be patient, sometimes you need to walk away, other times try a different stroke or ad a layer of tape. My 2 cents

What brand are your stones? It is not just about grit for razors.

On the first two I would use 2 layers of tape on a good 1K.

First set the bevel, do not move to higher grit stones until you are absolutely sure the bevel is set. Ink will tell you if you are reaching the edge.

The first 3 threads in the Honing forum are packed full of honing information, start there. The library/Maintaining a straight razor/Honing has even more honing information.

What are you using for magnification?

There was a guy on here that had a great saying about honing "Honing a SR is easy,,, until it isn't"

Oh yeah that was me, hehehehehe


This it what Shaun is describing, read the part about NOT having to start at the 90° angle carefully or you will be going backwards


http://straightrazorpalace.com/advan...l-setting.html


another good tips thread for what you are going through

http://straightrazorpalace.com/honin...bing-over.html

Thank you all! I should be able to apply these ideas. Thought I was struggling, I needed a few ideas for a change up. Will post results

I am not a pro by any means and I do still struggle at times. My one problem that I can attest to was honing a Wade and Butcher wedge or near wedge with a smile that I have. I had a problem getting a good shave off it until I added another layer of tape. That made all the difference in the world. As you may have read in the posts above, sometimes you have to add more tape with a wedge.

Good luck and smooth shaves to you.


Mike

No Pro here either but watch your pressure when honing. You might need a tad bit more for the wedges and a tad bit less for the hollow grinds.
Like others have said..... you HAVE to get your bevel set or nothing else matters.

I have a 1/4 hollow I struggled with quite a bit, and an added layer of tape made all of the difference in the world in tandem with a rolling X to help with the smile. It is amazing sometimes what that tiny little bit of tape will accomplish in short order.

Those are beautys with caracter but especialy like the bostwick .

ok one razor done! it only took about 5 hours of edge restoration... i added a couple of extra layers of the the wade and butcher and it eventually worked (i stuck with three layers). i still had a fair chunk of metal to get through but the extra tape helped heaps and decrease the massive bevel. thanks for the idea to use the permanant marker to see where the stones were hitting the razor, this also helped to see where i still had work to go in getting to the edge.

one down three to go. (and another wedge.... i could be a while)