Thread: Rolling X - I think I figured something out

Originally Posted by outback

That looks like a razor, used by a barber.. They typically have a lot of hone wear at the toe, and always stops, into the stabilizer. Then they grab a new one, and do the same thing.

They're just tools to them guys, use it up, throw it to the side for a new one.

I just finished cleaning up and honing twenty some of them, the other day. Might not be pretty, but they'll still shave.

Those guys just had no vision of the future! That is interesting, though. I have been trying to figure out how someone would do this on accident. To me, nothing in this hobby feels more obviously wrong then when the stabilizer hits the stone.

I am still not sure I ~want~ to shave with it, but I do want to see if I could.

Super smiler would save it from becoming a shorty. But shorties are fun too.

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Planeden, if I may share some experience. You can buy worn razors and make them shave. Rewarding.

OR you can put off buying 4 or 5 of them and buying a nice, quality, and pristine blade.
Trust me, a proper blade will take no time and will perform 50 percent better. Likely more.

Blades are ground to be efficient. Most especially the good vintage ones.
As half the sucker is gone, scales are broken, profiles are in the past, improper honing/stropping in the mix. Hone wear?
Damage/wear done in the past or in the present makes the razor begin to be a hunk of steel instead of what it was as-new.

Good shape. Yeah!

I appreciate your experience and reject it . More precisely, I am delaying it.

First, let me say it is funny you popped in here. The razor that started this thread was the beautiful one you sent me for Movember. It had a good bevel set on it, but just needed to get shave readied. So, it was that one that I had my AHA moment because it had that nice bevel and I could feel what the blade wanted to do.

Now, as to delaying your experience: A buddy of mine was drunk in my garage crying over his girlfriend. And, I am nothing, if not blunt, and told him exactly what he should do. And he said "you're right, but I can't. I have to learn this one for myself".

So, that is where I am. You are right, but I have to learn this for myself. I know that in one sense I am wasting my time with many of these razors. But, on that blade I showed I learned how to unpin a razor, techniques in polishing, and I suppose the jury is still out on whether I learn to sharpen it. I don't remember if that is one of the ones I learned to pin on. But, I have repinned all the ones that the scales that were in good shape of could be repaired.

Also, to both laugh at myself and illustrate my point. Someone posted a single picture of an ebay auction and asked if it was worth buying. And a geometric master who frequents these parts listed about 10 things wrong from one grainy photo. Even went through and circled little bits to say "you can see here that..." and I said "no I can't". I probably spent half an hour looking back and forth between the photo and the list trying to see what he saw. I may have been able to see and understand half of them. And, the only way I will ever know if I saw the right things and see the ones I couldn't is the put them in my hands and play with them.

So, long story less long, I will never learn if I were to just listen to all your advice and not make my own mistakes. It may be six months from now that I am working on something that just isn't happening and I will remember CCR saying "if you hold the stone in your hand...." and try it.

By all means, keep it coming. I'll learn from it eventually .

Originally Posted by Gasman

IMO, Id cut off the toe and make it a shorty. Grind the heal/stabilizer back away from the edge. Then see about honing. But that would be if i had nothing better to work on. The blade has been worn to the point of being scrap. Learn to buy razors that are not beyond fixing properly. That too takes time to learn.
As Tom said... Buy one of much better shape and not 4 pieces of scrap metal.

Sorry for being so blunt. We all learn as we go along and have been there before.

I didn't know shorties existed before I got here. But, I do not have any of the equipment to make a shorty. Not sure what that equipment is, but I know I don't have it. Even if I wanted to just use my file, I bet my girlfriend would get tired of holding and would probably need a vice. Once I saw the shorties section it did make me rethink my collection, though.

Edit: Oh, and blunt is good. I like blunt. Beating around the bush tends to just be confusing.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Truth

You learn to hone from the top down not the bottom up

So many guys new to honing start at the bevel set and try and learn to hone often with suspect razors this makes the whole process take longer and honestly you teach yourself bad habits

Learning to maintain a shave ready razor first teaches you so much more about the touch required and you learn how the edge should look/feel much faster


But nobody listens

To be fair, you asked for one of the worst examples. That one has not made it into the "to be honed" bucket. I am having trouble with razors in much better shape than that one . But, there are at least five razors in line before that one.

All the razors I have been working on so far have been very kind to me and just needed flat strokes. Then I was playing with one Sharptonn sold me and it needed a bit of a twist at the end. It is next in line to shave with to see if I got it right.

But, you do have me concerned with the "bad habits" part. So, I'll have to do some pondering when the ugly ones come up.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Truth

You learn to hone from the top down not the bottom up

So many guys new to honing start at the bevel set and try and learn to hone often with suspect razors this makes the whole process take longer and honestly you teach yourself bad habits

Learning to maintain a shave ready razor first teaches you so much more about the touch required and you learn how the edge should look/feel much faster


But nobody listens

100% agree. Learn to refresh an edge first. You do that all the time, anyway, even if you start with a shave ready razor. It's the logical gateway drug to honing. But some guys don't start with a shave ready razor and that's the problem. If every newbie started with a shave ready razor it would be pretty obvious.

Originally Posted by Euclid440

Yup, heel correction would have made the razor so much easier to hone and would have prevented all the damage to the Heel, Stabilizer, Spine, Frowning edge and Massive Wear at the toe.

The razor is riding on the stabilizer, which keeps the heel half of the razor off the stone, so the honer just applied more pressure and needlessly caused all that damage.

Re profiling the heel will move the corner of the edge, at the heel, well forward of the stabilizer and prevent the stabilizer from making contact, the edge will then sit flat on the hone.

You could reshape the heel or make the heel match the toe for a super smiler. Either way nothing will fix the toe. A Super Smiler will also remove the frown at the same time removing a minimum of steel.

As said earlier, this is not honing, this is repair work, so that it can be properly honed. Two layers of tape should make up for lost spine thickness. It is an easy repair, there are several threads on heel correction, all you need is a diamond plate or low grit stone. The steel is thin at the heel and can be removed easily.

Do make a plan/template and mark the razor with a sharpie, it is too easy to cut too much and make things worse.


Attachment 328460Attachment 328461

It is funny, I thought about making the heel match the toe, but in the end did not think that it would look good. This was a before picture. I have "reshaped" the heel. I spent an evening going through all the blades and reshaping the ones that needed it. But, I am extremely bad at it still. I have not been able to figure out the stroke down the diamond plate to get a curve. It is because the steel is so thin, my attempts so far make a guitar plucking sound as part of the blade catches in the grit. So, I ended up with chamfers instead of curves.

The spine thickness is pretty even, though. It's 0.176" at the heel and 0.172" in the middle and toe. But the blade width drops from 0.59" in the middle to 0.47".

Use your common sense with the more difficult ones. I don't think Glen is saying you can't have a go at the "restorer's dream" razors off ebay, just that they probably shouldn't be your first intro to straight razor honing if it can be avoided. At some point you do have to try a restoration hone I reckon, even if it is just to say you've done it, but if by that time you have developed the requisite honing skillset the job's easier and less prone to ruination.

I have to say, and probably Glen would have had this issue too back in the day also, that when I first started there was not a tonne of info out there on straights (or at least I didn't know where to find it) - I think SRP was either in its infancy or about to start up. My first few razors were the un-awesome kind off ebay and a brand new Dovo bought from a shaving store. Perhaps counterintuitively, that Dovo was actually the worst thing I could have bought because I thought that was the standard of edge required on a straight razor, never understanding that the factory only really did a rough bevel job and nothing more! So I laboured for a long time teaching myself how to hone on these crap razors using a crappy-edge razor as the benchmark. I got there eventually, but if I had had the resources of a place like SRP back then I think I could have saved myself months, if not years of heartache and pain.

What's the point of my ramble? Dunno...I'm an old man now and I'm allowed to both ramble and talk about the good old days. Go hone a razor whippersnapper.

James.

Originally Posted by CrescentCityRazors

100% agree. Learn to refresh an edge first. You do that all the time, anyway, even if you start with a shave ready razor. It's the logical gateway drug to honing. But some guys don't start with a shave ready razor and that's the problem. If every newbie started with a shave ready razor it would be pretty obvious.

My first razor I honed was shave ready when I bought it. I didn't hone it until after it was no longer shave ready though. It's a Col. Conk i got in the early 2000s. But, I had a full beard for probably 7 of those years, so it sat in a drawer for a while.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

Use your common sense with the more difficult ones. I don't think Glen is saying you can't have a go at the "restorer's dream" razors off ebay, just that they probably shouldn't be your first intro to straight razor honing if it can be avoided. At some point you do have to try a restoration hone I reckon, even if it is just to say you've done it, but if by that time you have developed the requisite honing skillset the job's easier and less prone to ruination.

I have to say, and probably Glen would have had this issue too back in the day also, that when I first started there was not a tonne of info out there on straights (or at least I didn't know where to find it) - I think SRP was either in its infancy or about to start up. My first few razors were the un-awesome kind off ebay and a brand new Dovo bought from a shaving store. Perhaps counterintuitively, that Dovo was actually the worst thing I could have bought because I thought that was the standard of edge required on a straight razor, never understanding that the factory only really did a rough bevel job and nothing more! So I laboured for a long time teaching myself how to hone on these crap razors using a crappy-edge razor as the benchmark. I got there eventually, but if I had had the resources of a place like SRP back then I think I could have saved myself months, if not years of heartache and pain.

What's the point of my ramble? Dunno...I'm an old man now and I'm allowed to both ramble and talk about the good old days. Go hone a razor whippersnapper.

James.

Ha, I didn't take it as not to have a go. More of a caution that if I don't know how to do the easy ones, not going to get the hard ones done right. Learn to fall before you learn to walk, that sort of thing.

I am with you on the shave ready thing. My benchmark is based on a memory of a store bought razor from 18 years ago. So, do my edges come out to some high standard....i don't know....but it results in comfy close shave. But, I love driving my Toyota. I have never driven a Ferrari, so I can't say if it drives as well as that, but it gets me from place to place. Also, it will get loosey goosey going around a corner at 25 mph, so I get to have that livin' on the edge feel without breaking the speed limit .