Thread: honing old wedge blade without making a large edge

Good day gentlemen

Since few days, I'm occupied with this question. I love old wedge blades. I'm poisoned of them. Until now I honed many razors with success ( if we don't count all my first blades while I was learning). Well here the question, some old wedge blades some time they have lost width to heel with a smile edge or even not a smiley edge ( or a very softly smile bevel) I can't hone them with keeping the edge less large possible and while I was trying to have a bevel which cut arm hairs I'm having large and ugly edges, that's annoying!. Sometimes I need to try hold the spin up but this is hard too to find the good angle.

So id like to ask you if you have any tuto or tips to understand if I need to go with spin hold up ( hide know the right angle? ) or go through with normal homing but less large edge.

Here I add two pictures of a blade of mine before and after honed. I must mention the blade had a butter knife edge when I bought it ( as 0.5 mm with of the bevel when I looked it from down to see better it's bevel)

1st

2nd

Edit: That was hard to add pictures by my phone.

Use electrical tape...... I have used 2 or 3 layers to get a smaller edge. Pay attention to the tape and if needed replace the top layer when and if it gets worn down. This has worked for me on doing wedges and not wanting to get a "wide" edge.

Wedges usually have enough metal for a complete regrind. That would solve the geometry issues but electrical tape over the spine during honing is a commonly used approach to minimise bevel size.

Your going to have to regrind it some to get that bevel down now. Otherwise using tape will give you 2 bevels. The thickness at the spine is worn down a lot more than the thickness at the bevel. Hope you can visualize that .

With that fancy of a spine....would you do a regrind on it?

sure not. i'm not regrind it. actually it get honed and i can shave. i just wanted to have tips for next times. to get a smaller result with an other wedge. actually i used 4 or 5 slayers of tape with this blade but i did not have success to cut my arm hairs. i even don"t think if i added 15 slayers, i won't be honed well. as i said, i need to holp up the spine 0,5mm up for make bevel work on hones.

my question is not about only this blade but for having a technic and knowledge about to hone this kind of razors. with some, to make to wor/hone their bevels need to get really up their spine. how to know that before having a large edge? or do you think it will be normal to add 15-25 slayers of tape on the spine to get the good angle?

Originally Posted by Oustoura

sure not. i'm not regrind it. actually it get honed and i can shave. i just wanted to have tips for next times. to get a smaller result with an other wedge. actually i used 4 or 5 slayers of tape with this blade but i did not have success to cut my arm hairs. i even don"t think if i added 15 slayers, i won't be honed well. as i said, i need to holp up the spine 0,5mm up for make bevel work on hones.

my question is not about only this blade but for having a technic and knowledge about to hone this kind of razors. with some, to make to wor/hone their bevels need to get really up their spine. how to know that before having a large edge? or do you think it will be normal to add 15-25 slayers of tape on the spine to get the good angle?

By a good angle to you mean the proper bevel angle or do you mean a narrow bevel?

No, I don't think it is normal to add 15-25 layers of tape. I don't even think it is possible to hone with that many layers of tape on the spine. If you need that many layers of tape on the razor to get the right geometry it has some horrendous hone wear on the spine.

Bob

I don't think it is feasible to hone whilst holding the spine up. You should not require anything like that number of layers of tape - take a look at the Coticule.be website - there is a calculator on there that enables you to enter blade width and spine with and calculate how many layers of tape are required. The maximum they go up to is 4 layers, which seems about right in my opinion.

Also with blades that have a smile you may find that a rolling action is required - again the same site tries to describe this but is something you need to practice in order to get right. In my experience, some blades just have too many problems to get a consistently thin bevel - however, yours came with a lot better bevel than it has now - so you need also to consider that your abilities in honing are not as advanced as the person who originally honed it.

before i add more layers or hold up the spine, i tried as usual to hone it. but i did not have any good result. i was impossible to cut arm hairs, even if i pass the blade on my finger, i was just gliding even without cut. and that's how i had a large edge because while i was trying to hone it on hone without hold up its spine. it was not the bevel but the hone wear was working on the hones.

when i thought to hold up the spine and saw the bevel was touching on the hone and actually honing with some successfull result. i continued.

now i can shave myself, i stropped it as well as too. but just for my next times, i don't rather to have large hone wear. so needed to have some advices about that.

i tried the rolling action too. but it also required to hold spine up. the problem is not some point of the bevel get honed and some other is not. so rolling action with blade posed completely on the hone make nothing. (even with this one)

Yes, it looks like a heel forward rolling X stroke might have done the job. That would keep you off the flat on the tang which looks like you honed into on the second photo. The tape on the spine should stop just before/at where the flat starts on the tang. That would be my amateur honers guess.

Bob