OK Folks,
Mike (outback) did a stupendous job with that Shepherd razor, the scale repair is essentially invisible without magnification, and the razor is freakin’ beautiful. What a wonderful craftsman Mike is!
Now I have to hone the razor and do a job that doesn’t detract from his craftsmanship. The razor is not exactly standard, the bevel angle is only about 12.5 degrees. So that hot mess on the spine is 4 layers of electrical tape shielded with 1 layer of 1 mil Kapton, and I have a bevel angle ranging from 16.5 to 17.5 degrees along the edge. I actually measured the angle with the tape in place before I started.
There were some tiny chips - imagine that after 200+ years - so the first task was to Sharpie the bevel and see how it hit the 1k Shapton Glass. Not too badly, weak at the heel as you might imagine, and I used sliding strokes, the corner of the stone a la Glen, and circles/ellipese at the heel and got the chips out and new bevels formed. See image 1.
Next up, a 2k Shapton Glass HR, my normal bevel setter, and after coaxing the edge at the heel again, I was rewarded with a nice clean HHT at 2k. Next, a Shapton Glass 6k HC (high carbon), the next stone in my normally 2-stone synth progression, a little stropping, and I had silent HHT all along the edge. Finally, a 2-stage finish with a Nakayama something, deep layer stone and probably a sunashi suita. It will remove 1k Chosera scratches in 35 normal honing strokes on it’s own slurry, so that’s what I did for pre-finish, to get a little more refinement on the bevel. Finally, the same stone with tomo slurry and I’m done after stropping. Shave tomorrow!
Thanks again to Mike, and I’ll try to follow up with some more images of his incredible work - it’s simply unbelievable what he did with this razor.