Thread: Can this be honed, or is it garbage?

Picked up this razor from a pawn shop for $20. They said it was a vintage "made in Hawaii" razor, but I'm not sure about that.
The blade is stamped "Kohaku 1050) and has what looks like ebony scales.

Didn't realize until I got it home that the blade seems badly warped.



Can a razor that's warped be made shave ready, or is this a waste of time?

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks

Darron

Look up rolling X stroke.

From the wear marks on the spine, I don't see signs of warp? It must be way off to not have been used. Use the edge of a flat surface and put the flat of the spine down on it, leave the heel sticking out a few MM over the edge, if it rocks it is warped, but why ebony scales on a warped razor? Puzzling. Good luck with it.

The short answer is yes, it can be honed. It is an advanced honing skill. It is not going to be easy and you will have to do some serious gymnastics to get that bevel set. You may want to put that one aside for a future project, unless of course you are already proficient with honing a straight blade, in which case you may want to tackle it. The Magic Marker is a very good start. You will want to stay off the stabilizer to start with. I can see you have been hitting it and that will definitely mess with your ability to get the edge from in front of the heel to part way down the blade. Rolling your x stroke will help you hit it all the way along. Once you get your stroke figured out the rest is pretty standard.

The toe looks like it has been cut off,,, a grinding tool of some type beat the H*ll out of the shoulder, looks re-pinned,,,somebody went crazy with a black marker,,,Ebony woood scales not hardly.

Don't trash it, clean it up as best as you can, then put it in a display case & give it a story that interests people that don't know any better.

Do I see wear on the stabilizer in the last pic?
If so that may need to be corrected for easier honing. From the pic that razor looks very honable, but it is not an easy case as far as what to do exactly to get it to shave.
Simplest would be a combination of rolling x-stroke and heel forward strokes.

I assume that the photos indicate a marker test, showing where contact was, and was not, made on the hone. Is that correct, and was that just from one stroke? The marker wear also shows contact on the stabilizer so you'll either have to correct that or just make sure that it stays off of the hone. If you do the latter, you still can end up with a hook over time, but that easily can be eliminated by honing just the hook with the blade perpendicular to the hone.

Correct, about 10 passes on a 12k just to show contact areas.

OK, so as stated above, the rolling X stroke is going to be what you'll need. If you are not familiar with it, there are plenty of descriptions and videos of it around here. Continued use of the marker test will help you to confirm that you are honing the entire length of the blade.

Worse case of there is a bad warp yo could try narrow/side hone homing methods