Thread: 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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