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?