Thank you all for your help.

Regarding sending the blade off to a honemeister, I have no idea where I would find someone like that. I will take a look in Vancouver; just a ferry ride away, but I won't be too heartbroken if I can't find one. I bought all these hones due to lack of anyone in town that could sharpen my SR.

I am never one to be discouraged, so I went at it last night with the smiling blade technique. That works great for the convex side and I managed to get a bevel on that side that was even. On the concave side, however, the geometry of it all makes it near impossible to get contact with the stone in the middle of the blade, and I did not find any suggestions for that. Using the 1 inch on the right side of the hone works great from the middle of the blade to the toe, but there really isn't a way to get from middle to heel. However, I did manage to get a bevel on that side as well, so we'll see... I'm not thrilled with it, so I'm going to go back at it tonight.

Because the blade is warped, I'm not overly concerned with destroying the razor... seems to me that it's destroyed anyways. In the meantime, I have a perfectly straight Dovo Bismarck. I watched a video about factory honed blades, I think by Dr. Matt, and with confidence I stropped it up right out of the package; it cut better than this Dovo BQ ever has, so as far as learning to hone, I'm in no hurry. In the meantime, I will order a few cheapos off of ebay and see what I can do with them. Am I looking for just anything German, with no pits and preferably no rust?

RayClem, that video is what I did after my first honing session, when I saw the uneven bevels (heel-toe on one side, middle on the other). I thought to myself, "that ain't right..." and concluded that the only explanation was a warped blade. I took the blade to my chunk of granite (that I had recently purchased thanks to Dr. Matt and his lapping video). Sure enough, I get a clinking sound just like that video as the blade rocks back and forth.


People mention narrow hones for this warped-blade issue. My question now is, if I lap the side of the hone, which is only about 1 inch wide, will that suffice as a narrow hone?