I have a couple of Rolls Razors that I love and trade off with my standard straight (Dovo Ebony Bismarck 6/8). I've done some refurbishing and honing of multiple Rolls sets and blades and never had a problem getting an excellent edge on my blades until the other day...

It had been a while since I'd honed the blade. Daily stropping was keeping it in good condition, but I was thinking it might be needing a touch up soon. Then I dropped it a very short distance (<1 ft) to the counter top. The way it dropped, I"m pretty sure it did not land on the blade as the blade bar was of course in place. However, I figured I was planning on touching it up, so thought this was an omen that maybe I ought to do that ;-)

I lapped it (10 each) on my 4000/8000 stones then polished it (10 laps) on my 12000 stone. I've used that process before and always got a good edge. When I was finished, the shave I got was terrible! I inspected the blade closely and noticed something odd: it seemed both lateral edges (about 1/4 of the way in from the lateral edges) were polished from the sharpening I gave it, but the middle 1/2 of the blade looked untouched. Hmmm, sounds like the blade was bent! Not so. I flipped it over expecting to find the lateral edges of the blade untouched and the center 1/2 polished if the blade edge had been bent. However, the pattern on the other side o the blade edge was identical.

I started all over again tonight and reset the bevel on my 100/1000 stones. Then went through the pyramids on my 4000/8000 stones asLynn recommends and as I always do then finished up with my 12000 polishing stone as always. When finished, the blade wouldn't cut my arm hairs and retained the lateral/center mis-aligned sharpening effect I'd seen the first time around.

My stones are fine. I lapped them all and in doing so found no evidence they were anything but nice and flat. Finally, I slapped the blade in my Rolls device and honed it 50 times. Since the Rolls hone is significantly coarser than my 12K polishing stone, I could see that even in the Rolls, the edges were getting honed, but not the center of the blade.

Any ideas what is causing this and how I can fix it?