Thread: My 1K/4K challenge

So I've read about shaving off your 1k and 4K stones as an exercise, but was a bit chicken to try it. In another thread it was suggested that I give it a go and I decided to man up an see if I can improve my honing. I'm trying to go into this with my eyes wide open and learn as much as I can. I've selected a full hollow and a near wedge to work with. The hollow is one of the first razors I'd restored and have shaved with it a couple of times, but not very recently. IIRC I thought the shave was ok, but nothing spectacular. The wedge is a recent restore that I've never used.

With my 1K freshly flattened I got comfy and started with the hollow. Looking carefully at the edge with a new magnifier (higher mag and better resolution than I'd been using) it looked like the bevel hadn't been fully set. I did a few laps with some moderate to heavy torque on the blade and I felt a bit of roughness at the heel and toe, but it did undercut the water. So I started gradually reducing torque and checked the edge every 50 or so laps and threw a few circles in for kicks (I really need to practice those). The roughness was gone and it was looking like the two bevels were meeting, but I noticed when I went super light with the pressure (blade weight only) it would stop undercutting. In my head I'm thinking that when I put torque into the stroke the blade is flexing a bit and effectively reducing the honing angle or lifting the apex away from the stone. The light strokes don't flex the blade and the not yet perfect apex is pushing the water not undercutting it. Am I way off base with this theory?

I took a couple of microscope pics looking down on the edge. At the higher mag it looks like there is just a really thin line of unfinished apex.

The edge at about 12.5X


The edge at about 60X (the little dark spots above and below the edge are dust)


I think I need to spend some more time with the light strokes to finish the apex. If I'm out in left field let me know.

The edge is tree topping arm hairs and feels sharper than when I started so I'm not as worried about the shave.