Thread: Honing a Gold Dollar is hard!

I have a cheap gd and 3k/10k whet stone and faux leather strop and although if I oil the stone it seems to make the blade sharper but nothing to what it should be. I've tried following YT videos but nothing seems to make this blade sharp... any advice?

Originally Posted by shaveuk

I have a cheap gd and 3k/10k whet stone and faux leather strop and although if I oil the stone it seems to make the blade sharper but nothing to what it should be. I've tried following YT videos but nothing seems to make this blade sharp... any advice?

Who is YT?

Yes, pick up a decent vintage razor. GD are not recommended for this exact reason.

They can be made to shave after repairing, with the proper tools and skills.

Which 3/10 combo stone are you using oil on?

You also may want to begin by reading the first 3 threads in the honing forum. Welcome to the forum.

A 1k stone would speed up the work. With a GD you will likely need to remove a considerable amount of steel to set the bevel.

Originally Posted by mainaman

Who is YT?

It's an abbreviation for youtube.

Yeh, get a 1k. That will help a lot. I have 2 GDs and the honed up fine and shaved well. Take the GD hysteria with much seasoning.

A good 1k is a good place to start. It also occurs to me that 3k to 10k is a big jump. I might suggest looking into a naniwa 5k or king 6k (Maybe a King 1k/6k combination hone?) To help bridge the gap.

I'm also curious ad to which 3k/10k hone you've got. Not all hones have proven suitable to our purposes here, and honing these is tricky enough with known good hones.

Originally Posted by shaveuk

I have a cheap gd and 3k/10k whet stone and faux leather strop and although if I oil the stone it seems to make the blade sharper but nothing to what it should be. I've tried following YT videos but nothing seems to make this blade sharp... any advice?

Welcome to SRP. How much experience do you have with honing ? I ask because when I was starting out I would frequently be frustrated by how long it might take to get where I wanted to go. One axiom of honing that is consistent is that the bevel set is the foundation of the whole enterprise. If the bevel isn't properly set you're building on sand. So use magnification to check for a properly set bevel before you move on to the sharpening/finishing stages.

One afterthought, these gold dollar razors have a mixed reputation. Many of them are ground incorrectly, heat treat varies. All this will make them difficult to hone without correction to the grind, and if the heat treat is off one way, or the other, there is nothing you can do but use it for a box opener. The adage 'you get what you pay for' might apply here.

It only cost me £10 Inc brush and strop lol. It would have been nice to shave with but I don't mind using it to practice on because I wouldn't want to buy a higher end one and kill it!

My 3" stone is red one side and it looks like marble the other, I assume the red side is for bevel setting and the other for sharpening? I used oil on the red side.

I'll post some pics later

I've seen the hones you're talking about I think, like a ruby red synthetic hone on one side, glued to a natural agate backing that comes in green or white?

So here's the thing with that, I don't know what the quality of the red 3k side is. But I know that green Agate side cuts rediculously slow. In all honesty, I think you're going to need a different hone because the "10k" side will never polish away the 3k stria. The natural stone is extremely slow cutting, and only good for use as a final burnisher.