Thread: A tape-free experience

So I've got this FW Engels Leader razor I'd gotten from my father years ago which I sent out for light restoration and honing about 2 years ago. SRD put a wonderful edge on this razor and somehow I managed not to destroy it with my early stropping endeavors. Recently though it started to feel a bit uncomfortable and I knew it was time to finally work with this blade. I looked at it under a loupe and found some pretty significant chips in the toe-wards third of the blade; narrow, rectangular chips. The rest of the edge looked good so marked up the bevel with a sharpie and did a couple of smooth passes on my soft arkansas to see just how much of the bevel I wasn't hitting. This razor has significant spine wear and the existing bevel put on by SRD was uneven. I remember watching one of Lynn's videos where he say's they usually don't use tape so I thought maybe this blade was honed tape free (which considering the spine I would have thought improbable). Well, a couple of passes and nearly the entire bevel was making contact. Just a little focused torque and no problem honing the entire edge. The soft ark made short work of the chips (a shout out to Steel here; I reached out to him about using arks as he uses them extensively. He helped me get the most from these stones simply by prepping them before each use; I'd not been doing that and they'd become slow to the point of hardly cutting at all).
After inspecting the edge and seeing the chips removed I went to the hard ark and after a bit, checked the edge again. I was surprised to see tiny chips in the same locations and similar shapes as the original chips. Does this indicate weak areas in the edge?
I continued on with the hard until these smaller chips were gone. Then to the translucent (no, no messing around with prepping this stone, burnished and fine). I shaved with this razor yesterday morning and have to say it was amazing. Usually after working on a razor I'm like 'Yep, 90% there, close!' This edge is there.
Probably the easiest honing experience I've had to date. Wish my other blades were this easy, or maybe (hopefully) I'm finally really getting to understand the Arkansas way.
Now back to this Sheffield blade that torments me still............
Paul
And a group shot of my Arks with my Ralf Aust: