How to Make a Heel Hook and Trash a New Dovo
How to Make a Heel Hook and Trash a New Dovo
I came across this video of Harrelson Stanley honing a new Dovo on Shapton stones. In his defense he is Shapton’s Knife Demo guy.
(Sharpening a German Razor)
This video is interesting because I believe a lot of people hone this way, to avoid making a heel correction. If you do, you will make a heel hook, because you are lowering the edge, but not the heel under and behind the stabilizer.
His method of honing is a knife technique (He is a Knife Honer), edge trailing, multi lap, single side honing. Build a burr, then do the same on the other side.
He begins early on, making the burr and just makes it deeper as the video progresses.
The heel corner is past the stabilizer when he starts and the stabilizer is keeping the edge off the stone, (you can see were he pauses a lot in the beginning trying to figure out why that is happening), and he bread knifes a lot of the edge off on the 500 grit, the hook starts early on. He compounds the needless damage to the razor by not using tape on the spine.
He jams the corner of the stone into the stabilizer to try to get the edge flat on the stone.
Probably ¾’s of the video is of him lapping the stones, because I suspect he can feel the stabilizer digging into the stone. You can hear it as a grinding noise through the video and see the swarf on the corner of the stone.
He begins by bread knifing the edge on a 500-grit stone trying to get the edge straight, removing a lot of material and using the middle of the stone to bread knife.
He then sets the bevel on the 500 doing single side, edge trailing strokes and remove a lot of steel trying to get the razor to lay flat on the stone. He then jumps to the 16k and 30k and bread knifes the edge a few times trying to remove the burr he is making with edge leading single side honing and lots of pressure.
Through the whole video he never alternates strokes and never hones edge leading. He proclaims the razor done, then comes back after looking at the edge under a microscope and finds lots of deep 500 grit stria and a chippy edge, thank you edge trailing, mult-stroke, single side honing.
There are several tight shots of the edge and you can see the wear marks on the stabilizer and where the edge ends past the stabilizer and below the stabilizer. He probably lowered the edge at least a 32nd of an inch, if not more, that is a hook that will cut you.
The video is long, but you can fast forward through the stone lapping, not kidding, ¾’s of it is lapping
Bottom line don’t hone this way, if the heel corner is near or past the stabilizer, reshape the heel. It only takes a few minutes and can be done with any diamond plate or low grit stone. The steel is thin there and goes quickly.
Heel correction, a Rolling X stroke and some TAPE, could have saved this razor. At the end it has a spike point, what was a round tip, a heel hook and trashed spine.
Here is a tutorial on heel correction. (How to correct/re-profile a heel)