Thread: Reset the spine?

I have an eBay special W&B razor that I am trying to bring up to an acceptable level of sharpness. I spent about 2-1/2 hours with it on my sharpening stones the other night with no success.

here is my problem: the toe of the razor (or really that half of the blade) does not get any significant contact with the stone to get it sharp. I can tell this with the sharpie test, the black does not get rubbed off with any strokes on my Norton 4k/8k hones without an unacceptable amount of pressure.

First of all, I have a Norton 220/1k and 4k/8k stones, and I have lapped them flat with some 320 & 600 grit paper on a granite surface plat (from Woodcraft), so I know the stones are as flat as they can possibly be.

I have tried honing the razor every way I can think of, including heel leading and toe leading, x-pattern, etc and without sort of lifting the spine slightly I cant get any real amount of contact at the toe end of the razor.

The spine shows a good amount of wear, but even that looks uneven.

I'm wondering if I should try to reset/flatten the spine of my razor using the 220 or 1000 hone to make sure that it is flat before trying to proceed any further in sharpening my razor.

This has been frustrating since the heel half of my razor is sharp already, passing the HHT and others, but I cant shave with half a razor

It's not slightly twisted, has a smile or just tapers towards the end like many hand forged blades?
If you had a single grit or narrow stone it might help. Have you tried drawing the razor right to the stones edge so the toe alone is on the stone or using a curved rolling motion?
I've found a number of wedges to be like this.

I wouldn't mess with the spine. If you start trying to equalize the wear you'll wind up flattening it even more and that will upset the angle which will make it very difficult to properly hone. I think that some razors are beyond hope (unless your Bruno) and to me when there is extreme spine wear and especially if its uneven or there is warping of the blade its beyond what I'm willing to invest in a typical vintage blade.

I working on one now that has wear like you are describing luckily its a wedge, which are a bit more forgiving but I won't spend days honing to try and compensate for all the wear.If I can't get it shaving rite quick it will just go into the "drawer of shame".

Well, I spent another night with the razor, determined to get it sharp this time. I felt horrible putting the spine to the 220 grit Norton, but there's no faster way to remove metal unless you've got a bench grinder.

The flattening of the spine did seem to help tremendously, one side will evenly contact the stone, was slightly improved. It made sense to me that if the spine wasnt an equal width along the entire length of the razor, the edge wouldnt make full contact with the stone either.

I was able to hone with the X-pattern and with the toe of the razor leading to get contact across the entire blade edge. I've still got sharpie all over my razor though, LOL

I lost count, but I went at it for about 50+ strokes on the 4000 grit hone, then I did the 10,10,5,5,3,3,1,3,1,5 pyramid with my 4k/8k hone, and the razor was sharp like nothing I've ever seen!!!

the toe end of the razor still isnt quite as sharp as I think it could get, but still sharper than any other razor I own.

I finished the razor with my Tony Miller paddle strop on 1.0 micron diamond paste and 0.5 micron chromium.

Now the best part... the shave: This razor shaves like a dream!!! Smooth as a baby's bottom and no nicks or cuts!


I'm very proud that I was able to take a W&B butterknife and turn it into a shaver! Lucky for me that was one of my "learn to hone" razors, so I can put these new skills to use on other, nicer razors.

Lessons Learned:

1. SHARPIE - draw all over the razor's blade, thats the only sure fire way to see how much and where the contact is with metal to stone, Goof Off will take the sharpie off later
2. PATIENCE - man this seems to take forever, but tonight it was worth it
3. ANGLE - try different angles of moving the razor across the hone, and by that I mean the X pattern, heel leading strokes, or toe leading. I had to redraw the sharpie on the bevel several times before I was able to find strokes that would successfully make contact with the whole razor.

Consider this a learning experience. You could use the "3 wood dowels" or "3 brass rods" methods in a vise to gently bend the spine back to straight but this is a really, really, really iffy proposition. It's quite easy to crack the blade doing this. You mention the granite surface plate. Have you laid the razor on its sides on the surface plate backlighting with a flashlight? That will tell you the severity of the warp. If it's too warped it will likely never be a good shaver. Put it in your study collection or use it for non-shaving purposes. I keep chipped or otherwise messed up razors on my bench and in various places for cutting purposes. They may not shave well but they're still good tools!