What do you do with extremely uneven spines?

Hello,

I have this razor here that somebody gave me to practice honing on. It's probably crap because there's no "made-in" stamp on the tang and the logo is just "neptune", that's neither here nor there really though because all I'm doing is practicing right now. The spine on this razor is absurdly uneven looking to my untrained eye, even taking into consideration the smile it seems like there is maybe 5-10 times more wear on the spine near the toe than there is near the heel/stabilizer. Unsurprisingly, it seems large portions of the edge are not even touching the stone when laid flat, you can see large sections of one side of the razor are still completely covered in marker after a few strokes on the 1k.

The advice I was given by Glen was to use aproximately 1 layer of tape for 1mm of wear, 2 layers of tape for 2mm of wear, however in this case it seems to me intuitively that you would probably want to grind the hell out of the spine until it's at least semi-even before setting the bevel at all.

Thoughts? What would you do?

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First, is to correct the heel. Your beginning to hit the stabilizers.

Yes, there's hone wear, but from what I see, it looks even from each side.

Once the issue with the heel is resolved, a rolling x stroke should bring it all together.

Check thru the library on heel repair, or try the advanced search button on the top, rt. hand side of the front page of the forum.

Learning the rolling X is almost paramount, for honing a lot of vintage razors. JMHO

If you correct the heel you may have a fighting chance, but first clean the razor with 000 steel wool and WD40 to remove all the rust and gunk on the razor.

If you do not clean it, all that rust will end up on your stones and strop, dull the edge by running it on the corner of a stone a couple of time.

Once clean repair the heel, an Advanced search on Heel Correction will show you what need to be done. An old thread (How to correct/re-profile a heel) will show you how to do it in a step-by-step tutorial.

The heel is keeping half of the razor off the edge, previous honers just applied more pressure trying to get the edge on the stone and made the spine and edge all wonky.

It can all be fixed and probably made to shave, but they are 2 different things, repair then hone, first clean.

Once you make the repair, you can hone it. A bit of a project, but not much to lose.

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Originally Posted by Euclid440

If you correct the heel you may have a fighting chance, but first clean the razor with 000 steel wool and WD40 to remove all the rust and gunk on the razor.

If you do not clean it, all that rust will end up on your stones and strop, dull the edge by running it on the corner of a stone a couple of time.

Once clean repair the heel, an Advanced search on Heel Correction will show you what need to be done. An old thread (How to correct/re-profile a heel) will show you how to do it in a step-by-step tutorial.

The heel is keeping half of the razor off the edge, previous honers just applied more pressure trying to get the edge on the stone and made the spine and edge all wonky.

It can all be fixed and probably made to shave, but they are 2 different things, repair then hone, first clean.

Once you make the repair, you can hone it. A bit of a project, but not much to lose.

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Thanks for the links! I'll take a read through and see. I'm doing this only for learning so difficulty and quality are not really relevant as long as I end up learning more about razor sharpening.

We all started, somewhere.
Good that you want to learn to maintain your own equipment. At least you have help, doing so. I learned, before the internet, but have gained much more knowledge, since then.

Learning to hone correctly, is a long road to travel. But once you reach your destination...... Bliss.!

You have a few things going on. The spine wear, the heel amd if you do straight strokes you will never hit all of the edge. Gssixgun has a three video series on you tube on honing a smiling razor. Granted the smile on that one is not deeply pronounced, but the technique is similar. Correct the heel amd follow the videos to get the concept of the stroke down and all will be fine, two layers of tape should take you there.

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Originally Posted by RezDog

You have a few things going on. The spine wear, the heel amd if you do straight strokes you will never hit all of the edge. Gssixgun has a three video series on you tube on honing a smiling razor. Granted the smile on that one is not deeply pronounced, but the technique is similar. Correct the heel amd follow the videos to get the concept of the stroke down and all will be fine, two layers of tape should take you there.

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He showed me that live the other day. I think my stroke is good enough but it just seems to me like with a spine worn that unevenly it would probably make more sense to grind it than to tape it. if the spine is so much thicker near the heel wouldn't it always have problems contacting the hone even with good technique?

If you grind it, the geometry gets worse and the honing gets harder. Truly it’s all about the stroke. Even with the heel sitting down, if your stroke is correct it will hit 90% of the edge. Grind the spine and stuff a razor. Very few razors need the spine adjusted, and that is not a beginner skill.

Spine doesn’t make much difference the edge s what shaves

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Originally Posted by RezDog

If you grind it, the geometry gets worse and the honing gets harder. Truly it’s all about the stroke. Even with the heel sitting down, if your stroke is correct it will hit 90% of the edge. Grind the spine and stuff a razor. Very few razors need the spine adjusted, and that is not a beginner skill.

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Gotcha. If you set the bevel correctly you eventually can stop using the rolling X strokes when moving on to higher stones, right?

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Originally Posted by rickytimothy

Gotcha. If you set the bevel correctly you eventually can stop using the rolling X strokes when moving on to higher stones, right?

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No, you'll always hone with a RollingX, start to finish. If it has a smiling blade, or wonky wear, its going to take a rolling X to hone it.

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Originally Posted by outback

No, you'll always hone with a RollingX, start to finish. If it has a smiling blade, or wonky wear, its going to take a rolling X to hone it.

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Brutal. My inner perfectionist winces at the idea that it's not really fixable. I'll still try though.

It'll hone up, just gonna take a bit to get there. Definitely not the best blade to be learning on, but if you master it, the next, and preceding razors will get easier.

So much to learn....young grasshopper.

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Much of the problems with this and similar razors is that the person honing wants to make the blade fit their idea of what is right.

Change your method to fit the razor not the other way around.

When my spines uneven I go to the Chiropractor! Ha! sorry couldn't resist.

The shape of the edge is a smirk, that better than straight. Razors only went to straight edges to get high production thin ground razors. Historically, pre hollow grinding machines, every razor had a smile, some thinner grinds than others. The smile or smirk is the better shaving edge. The goal is to get it shaving along the full edge, while maintaining the smirk of the razor. Sure you could grind it straight, but that will be a lesser shaving razor. I always try to gently hone towards a smirk, even if I start with a straight edge. The straighter the edge, the less it will smirk, but the closest thing to a frown is a straight edge.

The heel is keeping the edge off the stone. If you correct the heel, the razor will sit better on the stone and the amount of “roll” needed may be very slight. The spine was not that cooked, the heel is the problem.

Correct the heel, then mark the spine, stabilizer, and edge with colored sharpie, do a few laps on a high grit stone and see where you are making contact.

Then adjust your stroke to hone the whole edge. You will need at least 2 layers of tape to make up for spine wear.

You hone how the razor dictates. What you have now, is a perfect example of doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

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Originally Posted by RezDog

The shape of the edge is a smirk, that better than straight. Razors only went to straight edges to get high production thin ground razors. Historically, pre hollow grinding machines, every razor had a smile, some thinner grinds than others. The smile or smirk is the better shaving edge. The goal is to get it shaving along the full edge, while maintaining the smirk of the razor. Sure you could grind it straight, but that will be a lesser shaving razor. I always try to gently hone towards a smirk, even if I start with a straight edge. The straighter the edge, the less it will smirk, but the closest thing to a frown is a straight edge.

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By even it out I don't mean remove the smile, I mean just get the wear to a relatively even depth across the razor. For some reason there is almost no wear near on the spine near the tang, and almost 2mm of wear near the toe, which seems like it would cause the edge to be super uneven. Even with a smile, if this razor was correctly honed previously, it should still have relatively even wear, should it not? Is it normal for razors to have almost no wear in some places of the spine?

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Originally Posted by Euclid440

The heel is keeping the edge off the stone. If you correct the heel, the razor will sit better on the stone and the amount of “roll” needed may be very slight. The spine was not that cooked, the heel is the problem.

Correct the heel, then mark the spine, stabilizer, and edge with colored sharpie, do a few laps on a high grit stone and see where you are making contact.

Then adjust your stroke to hone the whole edge. You will need at least 2 layers of tape to make up for spine wear.

You hone how the razor dictates. What you have now, is a perfect example of doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

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The heel is part of the edge is it not? I'm not sure what you mean by the heel keeping the edge from sitting flat. The heel indeed does look terrible on this razor but I don't understand how it would mechanically cause it to sit unevenly, unless it is blatantly tilted in one direction.

Adjusting the spine of a razor is a very advanced skill. It is done mostly to correct grinding errors. It will wreck an otherwise serviceable razor if used to even out hone wear. Geometry is kind of a delicate line. Razors of this era walked that line tightly. Because you are just starting, you are looking for a more simple route. What we are saying is actually the more simple route. It seems complicated, but really it is not. I’m sorry we can sit down and go go over it.

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Originally Posted by RezDog

Adjusting the spine of a razor is a very advanced skill. It is done mostly to correct grinding errors. It will wreck an otherwise serviceable razor if used to even out hone wear. Geometry is kind of a delicate line. Razors of this era walked that line tightly. Because you are just starting, you are looking for a more simple route. What we are saying is actually the more simple route. It seems complicated, but really it is not. I’m sorry we can sit down and go go over it.

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Not even really seeking simplicity as much as "proper" whatever that means to me being someone who has never done this before. It intuitively seems like it just would make much more sense to hone on a spine with even wear, I'll just accept that this is wrong, I have no problem with that there's no way I know better than anyone here, it's just the sort of thing that seems completely backwards until you probably hone 50 razors then eventually it makes perfect sense.

Very likely there is nothing about the spine that really needs fixing. Heel could use a little work, yeah. And you need a bit of the rolling x for that gently smiling edge. You are just honing it flat, for your sharpie test, which is why you have good contact along the central portion of the edge but not heel and toe. That would wirk fine, for a straight edge, but not a smile. Try your sharpie test again, but this time with a finger just barely pressing the edge to the hone near the heel at the beginning of the stroke, and gradually moving the pressure to the toe end with another fingertip as the razor travels along the hone. You will be rocking the pressure between the heel and the toe. Just one stroke, then have a look. Do the other side, have a look. Better? Do a couple more, to get the hang of it. Then try to do the same thing, but without the fingers, just using the one hand on the tang of the razor to roll the x. Be sure to torque the razor slightly so that the honing pressure is properly shared between spine and edge, and not all just on the spine. It's a lot to remember all at once, but it will come natural after a while.

My own personal way is to roll the hone under the razor, not the razor on the hone. But I hone in hand, and when honing in hand, rolling the hone is easy and natural.

Take this or leave it, but I always recommend that beginners hone in hand. It makes regulating pressure a lot easier. Razor and hone are just out there in front of you, as if floating in space, and they come together like two spacecraft docking in the void. Razor and hone find their own alignment. This short circuits many common beginner mistakes. It feels awkward for the first minute or two, then it will be like Ah-HAH! when it comes together for you. I think a lot of new honers try too hard to control the blade with two hands, and it often backfires.

<EDIT> You might also consider painting the spine's bevel as well as the edge bevel, when you do your sharpie test.

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Originally Posted by rickytimothy

Brutal. My inner perfectionist winces at the idea that it's not really fixable. I'll still try though.

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Well there’s your problem, your not a perfectionist, no one is and nothing is.

Look through the what are you working on thread. There are razors there with heavy hone wear. The guys that repair that do so by no evening the hone wear, but by hand sanding the flatness, it seems to vanish, but it’s still there, it’s just not apparent. Glen once said something like, the first step in a restoration starts at acquisition. The better the geometry and less wear the more sensible the repair. Razors will show you how they can be repaired but it takes time to see the signs.

When I restore a blade with hone wear it disappears but only through often hours of hand sanding.

Tackling a smiler with hone wear, geometry issues and heel problems is not a project I seek. These blades take lots of time and experience.

As others suggested, start on simple blades and learn from there.

Good luck

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Originally Posted by rickytimothy

By even it out I don't mean remove the smile, I mean just get the wear to a relatively even depth across the razor. For some reason there is almost no wear near on the spine near the tang, and almost 2mm of wear near the toe, which seems like it would cause the edge to be super uneven. Even with a smile, if this razor was correctly honed previously, it should still have relatively even wear, should it not? Is it normal for razors to have almost no wear in some places of the spine?



The heel is part of the edge is it not? I'm not sure what you mean by the heel keeping the edge from sitting flat. The heel indeed does look terrible on this razor but I don't understand how it would mechanically cause it to sit unevenly, unless it is blatantly tilted in one direction.

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Yes, it suffered some ham fisted honing in its life. It’s from people that are honing with pressure on the toe, for reasons that I do not understand. I think in part it’s not just now that people hone without knowing the process. Honing and other hand skills, often have been figure out long before us. Sometimes we have to put a level of trust in those in the loop, choose a mentor and blindly follow their instructions until we understand it. At some point the light comes on and we understand why we are doing it that way.

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Originally Posted by RezDog

Look through the what are you working on thread. There are razors there with heavy hone wear. The guys that repair that do so by no evening the hone wear, but by hand sanding the flatness, it seems to vanish, but it’s still there, it’s just not apparent. Glen once said something like, the first step in a restoration starts at acquisition. The better the geometry and less wear the more sensible the repair. Razors will show you how they can be repaired but it takes time to see the signs.

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Can someone explain roughly why grinding the spine down (in theory, I'm not going to try it) would ruin the geometry? I made a picture showing what I mean, the way I understand it the only reasonable way to solve the pictured problem would be to even out the spine until its semi-even, otherwise the blade would always sit so severely unevenly on the stone that it would take a high level of skill to hone it into reasonable shape, on both sides, every single time you tried to hone it. The red lines in the picture are roughly what you would get with leaving the blade flat on the hone vs the purple line being if you managed to compensate for it.

I suppose it is actually a correct assumption that it is really hard to get this right and that this razor is essentially garbage to a beginner, but I'm still baffled by the idea that grinding it in theory would mess up geometry.

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Originally Posted by rolodave

As others suggested, start on simple blades and learn from there.

Good luck

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Definitely will do, when I was given this razor I had no idea in how bad of shape it actually was until Glen showed me how to inspect for certain problems. Believe it or not the person who gave it to me said they shaved with it many times but said it was starting to get dull, despite the fact that the blade was absurdly badly honed and chipped too, I feel bad for that guy's skin.

There is a ratio of ideal spine thickness to blade width that gives the razor the ideal edge. If a well experienced person hones the razor, ideally the spine and the edge wears at the same rate, and the geometry is maintained. Enter a ham fisted person that hones, in this case, with heavy toe pressure. Taking the spine and the edge down on the toe. At this point in theory the edge has worn and the spine has worn, albeit more at the toe than the heel, but the edge angle may be maintained. If tryouts take the spine down all the way to match the spine wear all along, it with throw off the edge angle at the heel. Right now it is most likely that the angles are still ok. Razors of this era were made with pretty delicate geometry and most would not shave or maintain an edge well if that is interrupted.

I am haveing a hard time understanding your issue.

Do you want an exact same bevel on both sides?

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Originally Posted by rickytimothy

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Can someone explain roughly why grinding the spine down (in theory, I'm not going to try it) would ruin the geometry? I made a picture showing what I mean, the way I understand it the only reasonable way to solve the pictured problem would be to even out the spine until its semi-even, otherwise the blade would always sit so severely unevenly on the stone that it would take a high level of skill to hone it into reasonable shape, on both sides, every single time you tried to hone it. The red lines in the picture are roughly what you would get with leaving the blade flat on the hone vs the purple line being if you managed to compensate for it.

I suppose it is actually a correct assumption that it is really hard to get this right and that this razor is essentially garbage to a beginner, but I'm still baffled by the idea that grinding it in theory would mess up geometry.

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Once you remove steel, you can never put it back.

When a razor is new, it should have a width and spine thickness that combine to give a pretty reasonable bevel angle. As a razor is honed throughout its useful life, steel is removed from the edge, and from the spine. In theory anyway, they are removed proportionally, more or less, and so the bevel angle may change but it won't change much, with proper honing. When you deliberately grind down the spine you are short circuiting the self sustaining geometry.

You will see a lot of razors where the spine is not parallel to the edge and similar defects. You will see the width of the polished bevel surface ending up asymmetrical, wider on one side than the other, or inconsistent, wider at parts of the balde and narrower at others. You will see the spine taking a lot of wear at one end on one side and a lot of wear at the other end of the other side. Believe it or not, this is not an impediment to getting the razor to shave well. As long as you have SOME bevel at all points along the blade on both sides, and they meet in a good, tight apex, the razor will shave just as good as your tools and technique allow. Might not be pretty, but pretty doesn't shave. You can make it look pretty with judicious sanding, but that is a whole nother operation. And you don't thin the spine, only round down the edge of the spine's bevel flat, giving it the appearance of not having been massively honed. Similarly, you can thin the steel on the side and at the point where the edge bevel is wide, and that will make the bevel width more consistent. These are just cosmetic things and very labor intensive. Go for it if you like, but you don't want to grind down the spine, normally. Feel free to experiment, though. There's lots of Dovo Bests out there that are pretty whopperjawed. If you can find some old stock Gold Dollar 66's, you will find many of them are way out of parallel.

The one you got, just hone it with a bit of a rolling x stroke and see what you get. Remember, you are totally totally wasting your time if you don't first get a good bevel set. Advancing through your progression will do no good at all if the bevel is not set.

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Originally Posted by rickytimothy

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Can someone explain roughly why grinding the spine down (in theory, I'm not going to try it) would ruin the geometry? I made a picture showing what I mean, the way I understand it the only reasonable way to solve the pictured problem would be to even out the spine until its semi-even, otherwise the blade would always sit so severely unevenly on the stone that it would take a high level of skill to hone it into reasonable shape, on both sides, every single time you tried to hone it. The red lines in the picture are roughly what you would get with leaving the blade flat on the hone vs the purple line being if you managed to compensate for it.

I suppose it is actually a correct assumption that it is really hard to get this right and that this razor is essentially garbage to a beginner, but I'm still baffled by the idea that grinding it in theory would mess up geometry.

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There is a Vid from Dr Matt called Tap and Wobble on Spine grinding

It is not something that I nor any one that values Vintage razors recommends,, understand Matt and I are friends and agree pretty much on many aspects of honing but not on this ..

He believes that grinding the crap out of warped spines simplifies the honing regime in the future for most honers, I believe there are enough Spines out there that have been destroyed by ham-handed honing that we don't need to add more.. People should learn to hone properly around the many issues that razors will present, because basically in the wild about 50% of all razors have issues..

Your problem on this razor has been accurately diagnosed at the heel on the front side, your spine wear although uneven is not really bad..


But if you want to grind the spine then watch Matt's vid and go for it

Just be cognizant of the fact tape is cheap and removable, where grinding steel off the razor, it can never be replaced

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Originally Posted by gssixgun

There is a Vid from Dr Matt called Tap and Wobble on Spine grinding

It is not something that I nor any one that values Vintage razors recommends,, understand Matt and I are friends and agree pretty much on many aspects of honing but not on this ..

He believes that grinding the crap out of warped spines simplifies the honing regime in the future for most honers, I believe there are enough Spines out there that have been destroyed by ham-handed honing that we don't need to add more.. People should learn to hone properly around the many issues that razors will present, because basically in the wild about 50% of all razors have issues..

Your problem on this razor has been accurately diagnosed at the heel on the front side, your spine wear although uneven is not really bad..


But if you want to grind the spine then watch Matt's vid and go for it

Just be cognizant of the fact tape is cheap and removable, where grinding steel off the razor, it can never be replaced

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So essentially the reason it's not a big deal that the spine wear is so uneven is because while it was being honed poorly, the metal coming off the edge was also extremely uneven in a way that still kept a somewhat straight edge throughout the process, and that grinding the spine down would actually ruin the weird edge that was created in the process, so it's much easier just to work with what we got and just roll the stroke with tape?

You got it.

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Originally Posted by RezDog

You got it.

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Ahh that makes perfect sense. I'll see what I can do to get this junk razor decent just for fun. Nothing to lose.