Thread: 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)

That guy is lapping his stone away to nothing. I'd be amazed if he gets 2 years out of them.

Couldn't watch it all, was getting ill.

I'll say this, ya gonna do a video on Dovo. Ya might as well show them how poorly they grind the shoulders and heel on their razors, and how to repair that so u no longer have honing issues. Guaranteed, that razor isn't bent or bowed.

A good video to put up for why you shouldn't take your razor to someone that doesn't specialize in honing them.!!

That guy raises a hell of a lot of slurry. I bet he is paid by Shapton to teach wannabe honemeisters how to wear a hone down like nobody's business.

Disclaimer, I did not watch the video. How many times have you heard a new member blithely say something like honing a razor should be easy as I have lots of experience sharpening knives? If what you say is true about the video, it is really unfortunate that a hone manufacturer let it loose on the net.

Bob

Originally Posted by BobH

Disclaimer, I did not watch the video. How many times have you heard a new member blithely say something like honing a razor should be easy as I have lots of experience sharpening knives? If what you say is true about the video, it is really unfortunate that a hone manufacturer let it loose on the net.

Bob

Bob, oh how I wish I could hit the Thanks Button time and time again! Thank you for a breath of fresh air!

I have terrible internet right now and could not watch too much of it before I ran out of patience.
I find it laughable that in the begining he said he was “lightly killing the edge and then breadknifed it using enough pressure that that poor Dovo was screeching on that 500 grit hone. I would like to see the end to see what he winds up doing to that poor Dovo. I will try again another day, but the work he did on the 500 was fairly brutal. Another good example of what not to do. I am fairly certain he is not going to shave with that, and if he did try I can’t imagine that it’s comfortable with what Marty has said.

I will have to watch it too when I'm at the library. Limited data at home. I'm pretty sure that I watched a barber shear sharpening video by the same guy and thought it was the best of the shear sharpening videos that I watched. Shear sharpening is probably worse than razor sharpening as far as people making videos that would destroy high end shears in short order.

I learnt a lot from that video.
You can make a tray for the Shapton Pond to sit in and umm that was it.

I did see down these bar a video on scissor sharpening. I saved it for later because i have some Tailor's eye witness scissors i'd love to get working..

Originally Posted by JOB15

I learnt a lot from that video.
You can make a tray for the Shapton Pond to sit in and umm that was it.

I did see down these bar a video on scissor sharpening. I saved it for later because i have some Tailor's eye witness scissors i'd love to get working..

The video that I'm thinking of was specific to hollow ground convex edge shears, so it may not apply to the Taylors.