Thread: Uneven Hone Wear on a Big Smilin' Wedge

There's already a disparity front face to back face on the spine wear front so you could say that is not aesthetically appealing. Regardless, it's not going to take much to reel the spine in and get heel contact anyway. Either recommendation would make the razor sit better on the stone. I do get Glen's three layers recommendation as it will show you pretty quickly if someone freehanded the thing like a knife in the past, but do use an appropriate amount for the geometry once you get the lay of the land. Calc the bevel at 3 or 4 points on the edge if possible, that helps also.

The last honer was heavy handed, honed with a flat stroke riding on the tang at the heel, on both sides, more on the backside. That would account for the uneven bevel at the heel. It does appear to have a slight warp by the wear on the spine.

We see this a lot with worn heels where the razor is hone on the stabilizers and keeps the heel off the stone, so the honer adds more pressure and spine wear.

In your case there are no stabilizers, but probably a slight warp. To compensate, more pressure was use and inadvertently honed on the point of the tang, lifting the heel off the stone compounding the problem. Note the very little spine wear on at the heel and toe and the thin to non-existent bevel at the toe and heel on the stamped side.

Put the razor on a high grit stone 8k or higher, ink the spine and the bevels and see where you are making contact on the bevels and the spine.

You can break the sharp bottom corner of the spine wear, rounding the look of the spine with some 4 or 600 under your thumb and refined with a wet and dry wrapped cork. The belly looks like it is going to need some work, (Hand sanding) so any scratches you put on the belly will come out anyway. You don’t need to remove much metal to change the look and none of the spine thickness or blade width.

A heel forward rolling x stroke, allowing the heel to come off the stone about half-way will hone it just fine. You may have to lift the heel to hone the toe on the show side and add finger pressure on the heel to hone it more.

You will probably need 2 layers of tape to compensate for the hone wear, Kapton over electrical works great. I would put the Kapton over 2 layers of electrical tape.
If you don’t want to do a full restore, some 600 followed by 1k will clean it up some, followed by buffing with Green Stainless greased compound will give it some shine without hours of sanding. Or followed with 600 wet and dry single directional sanding after buffing for a satin finish. If you don’t like it, you can buff it.

Thanks much for all the input guys! For what it's worth, I learned to hone on big smilin' Sheffields cuz that's what I like most, so I'm very used to rockin' and rollin' to get ALL of an edge honed-I've been known to spend a lot of extra time bringing problematic toes and heels in line. Somewhere between all these posts I will figure out a way (or contact Karl lol-he is a miracle worker with those old Sheffields!)

Originally Posted by kcb5150

Calc the bevel at 3 or 4 points on the edge if possible

^^^^^^ This.

Note that this does not change the razor at all.