Thread: Honing - Spine Wear

Well, I have honed and shaved with a couple of heavily worn, but not rusty ebay specials. Those razors were and will always be terrible shavers. I believe that those two razors were killed either by inexperience or by people trying to flatten the spine because they couldn’t figure out how to hone a smiling edge. The question for me at the time, was if I honed and shaved with those razors and they shaved well, and then I could remove some steel and the showing of the wear and have pretty razors for cheap. They did not shave well at all. Now on the other hand if you took razors that were expertly maintained and the edge and the spine had worn together, would it effect the shave. It’s indeed in need of an experienced honer, who bought a new razor and maintain it for a significant period of time to answer the skill tested question. I’m not sure to what end though. Are you trying to decide to hone with tape or no tape? Just curious?

No can of worms really. Most of the info is in the post, but a bevel angle of 16-17 degrees is around what most razors with a good geometry and steel will deliver a good shave with. Steeper bevels like the 19-20 degree Gold Dollars will shave milder and less aggressively. Obviously there’s a balance and that balance will likely be different for different people, beards, finishing hones, etc. I have some Gold Dollars/Gold Monkeys that shave very well compared to mainstream razors so I think that bevel angle alone is not such a good measure of the razor. I’ve often wondered how they decided on what angle to make the Gold Dollars, because they’re outside the norm. I suspect that they copied something, a lot of the old English razors had steeper bevels though I do not know if they were made that way originally.

Here is a single fact that I love to put out there when this question comes up

I have probably honed somewhere between 25,000 & 30,000 razors in the last 13+ years, tons of bad spine wear during that
I could try and guess how many I have restored..
I even re-grind a few really bad ones because of ham-handed honing

In all that, and in about 40 years of using them

I have NEVER had to fix one from someone using tape, not once, not ever, never


So for a few pennies worth of tape you to can have zero spine issues, at least until you can hone without wear on the tape, after that it don't matter



Hone on !!!

I straight shave daily, no facial hair since I started shaving decades ago. When I was younger I wore out a razor or two. Now I would take much longer. My stropping is magnitudes better, fine grit finishers are easier to locate stateside, learned the value of a pasted strop, keep my edges way longer, don't hone my razors nearly as much, rarely rebevel a previously honed razor and I have learned to compensate for a less then perfect edge with technique.

I've been using the same razor (bought new) about 5 years shaving 5-7 days a week. The other days are for my nicer razors. It has some very minor hone wear and I don't use tape. I had to rebevel it twice (again no tape). Once my wife put a tiny chip in the edge while cleaning the bathroom and knocked it over and once I dented the edge by tapping the edge of one of those huge elevated fountain sinks in a hotel. It has a few water spots, The tang is starting to look like it was cold blued. I give it about another 5 years assuming the same use before I would say it looks hone worn and vintage

The concern is whether a worn spine changes the angle of the blade and whether that makes a significant difference in the shave?


YES, and NO, all that counts is, does it shave and will the edge last?

The amount of angle change by thinning of the spine, does not affect the edge shaving ability unless a lot of steel has been removed, 1/8 inch or more, on some razors, steel dependent. It can make the razor more difficult to hone, but most can be made to shave.

I started straight shaving in 1975, with one razor, a 6-inch, Translucent Ark and an Illinois strop. It was bevel set twice, first by my barber when new, who I purchased it from, (He ordered the razor, strop and stone for me) and about a month later when I mucked up the edge.

After that it was stropped daily and touched up on the Translucent once a week or two as needed, without tape for at least 10 years.

There is almost no wear on the spine.

“What do the blade angles signify? Is there an ideal blade angle?”

“Ideal angle” depends on the steel and how thin an angle it will hold. Most razors come in between 16 and 20 degrees. The question is not what the angle of the bevel should be, but what the thinnest angle the steel will hold and how the edge is honed.

Micro bevels are an easy way to experiment with bevel angles, Kapton tape is thinner than Electric and more durable. Multiple layer can make minute angle changes.

I always hone with tape, no reason not to.

Lots of spine wear with very little edge wear changes the bevel angle. Lots of edge wear and little or no spine wear changes the bevel angle. Most guys who hone without tape put average wear on the spine and average wear on the edge. They wear proportionally. Therefore, the bevel angle does not change substantially.

If you put disproportionate pressure on the spine OR on the edge, your edge wear to spine wear ratio is out of the envelope. Newbies who hone on a fixed surface (bench honing) will sometimes have a problem with balancing spine/edge pressure. Old hands, not so much. They get the torque just right, and so the razor wears as it was meant to wear.

The general design of the modern (post WW1) straight razor is a very elegant and efficient thing. The spine thickness and edge width and belly thickness are such that for many decades of normal use and normal honing, the bevel angle will not change very much, in reasonably skilled hands. The razor is meant to be honed with the spine on the hone, and function as a self adjusting honing angle guide for the normal life of the razor. Vinyl electrical tape was not even invented until 1946 or so, and not in widespread use until ??? And not commonly used in razor honing until ??? I am guessing well into the internet age. Now, suddenly within the last 20 years or so, it is a thing. Am I wrong? Anyway the major evolution of the straight razor as we know it today did not make allowances for taping the spine. And so I believe a strong case could be made for only taping when there is a compelling reason to do so. For instance, a razor that will be displayed with pride. Or a razor that somehow has come to have proportionally more wear to the spine than to the edge. I will add that the evidence of spine wear is very obvious. Evidence of edge wear is not always so obvious. So many times the owner of a razor will believe he has crazy spine wear but does not realize that he also has plenty of edge wear, too. The evidence of the edge wear has been honed away!

A beginner is perhaps more likely to put too much pressure on the spine than on the edge, I think, particularly if he places both hands on the razor as is commonly done when bench honing, especially when bevel setting. In this context maybe precautionary taping is called for. Is it? Well, depends on the honer, right? What if he is deliberately torquing the edge down onto the hone? So even with a beginner at honing, the decision to tape or not is not so clear cut. I think the best precaution when just starting, is to only hone very expendable razors. Plenty of old Gencos and Ontarios around that are common as dirt and can be had for chimp change. Gold Dollars? No IMHO, not the classic models 66 through 800. Just too many issues. Sort of like a randomly selected Dovo Best Quality. Lots of obstacles to the newbie that wouldn't faze an old pro. But some of the newer model Gold Dollars are still pretty cheap but are easier to hone. The 1996. Anything starting with a "W". They are actually a delight to hone. Especially the W59 and W60. Cheap enough to be totally expendable. Still in production so no worries about ruining an irreplaceable bit of history. Instead of taping a nice big smiling Sheffield chopper so as not to ruin the spine, perhaps Mr New Guy could just do all his ruining on Chinese steel that still has a good chance of being a usable razor in the end, to reward the student.

Quite simply, the more steel is ground away from the edge, the more steel ideally should be ground away from the spine. Something for breadknifers and those just repairing deep chips to think about. Okay, so you change the bevel angle from 16.5 degrees to 18 degrees. Not such a terrible thing. It is still pretty close to the sweet spot. But what if you make the same 1.5 degree change to a razor that is already 18 degrees? Starting to get into a slightly more sluggish geometry. A lot of steel is being honed away from the edge but the honer wants to protect the spine anyway? It can be tough to make the right decision. Well, hopefully repair and bevel set will only ever be done once. And then the user has a choice of whether to tape when touching up the edge for the rest of his life, or not. Choose wisely, is all I say.

The tape. No tape argument has been around since it’s inception and the impetus for many an argument on this and other fora. It is a popular myth still propagated by some on another large shaving forum.

All seemingly valid points except, it does not hold water. While taping a razor is fairly new, about the age of this forum, 1980’s, it was done for one of three reasons.

1. Compensate for lost spine wear. 2. Prevent excessive spine wear, aggressive stone correction or new honer learning to hone. 3. Protect the spine on either a new razor or a restored razor simply for esthetics.

To say that razors were designed to wear and how is a big leap, Razors were a semi-disposable item like a knife or pair of boots. They sold for under a dollar. They were not designed for anything except durability, like most things made at the time. I doubt Henry Ford designed the Model A to be a running, driving automobile 100 years later.

Spine wear is mostly because of the use of aggressive Barber Stones at the turn of the Century. Up until then, those that knew how to hone, did so on natural high grit stones, Slates, Coticules Novaculites and Jnats. There was no excessive wear to the spine or edge. Hundreds of thousands of those razors are in prized collections today many still used today, near pristine.

I second what Glen observed and said. I have never seen a razor that would not hold an edge, that the blade width has been narrowed excessively, because of the use of tape.

I have seen and honed hundreds of razors that will not shave and hold an edge because the spine has bee worn excessively. The fix is, to tape the spine.

I tape all razors, there is no downside.

This has been an excellent thread. Many thanks to all who contributed.

This should be a sticky.