Thread: New honer needing some advise

Yea, the blade is warped, not uncommon for a new Thiers Issard from AOS.

But first, you are honing on the stabilizer and keeping the heel off the stone. You have ground down the stabilizer on one side where the heel is honed to the edge, but keeping the other side off the stone. When honing on the stabilizer, most folks just use more pressure, until they grind the stabilizer until the heel portion of the bevel is making contact. Don't do that...

Note the heel portion of the bevel is not hitting on one side. The toe bevel, is not hitting on the opposite side and there is very little wear on the spine over the toe, because of the warp. But it is not badly warped. An X stroke will easily hone the entire bevel.

You can hone it on a 4k, but must, remove some steel. So, you should use tape to protect the spine. Once you remove steel from the spine, you can never put it back, and most new honers use, too much pressure and do too many laps. The spine gets needlessly excessively ground.

I recommend 2 layers of tape, until you get a solid bevel on both sides, you will be using some pressure and doing some laps. 2 layers of tape will protect the spine, because it is easy to burn through a single layer. You will learn to feel when you burn through, the spine feel sticky or you feel the bits of tape in the slurry as a slight bump.

Once you have set the bevel fully, then remove all the tape and put on a fresh single layer and reset the bevel to the new angle. It should not take too many laps to reset, using an x stroke. Use 1 layer from then on.

The heel also needs re-shaping, as a hook is starting to form and is now a sharp corner. Now is the time to fix that, or that corner will cut you.

Re-shaping the heel, will also bring the corner of the edge further forward and well out of the way of the stabilizer.

So, 2 layers of tape and some circles, in set of 20, concentrating on the heel on one side and toe on the other. Ink the bevels. Pay attention to the ink removal and the wear on the tape, until you have a continuous bevel on both sides. Then do X strokes to eve out the bevels and set an even stria pattern on the bevels.

An investment in a colored sharpie, will allow you to easily track your progress, with the naked eye. Colored ink is easy to see. I use Red and Blue.