Thread: A Bevel Experiment!!!!!

Originally Posted by kerryman71

Good advice Glen. I got a huge lesson
in setting a bevel the other night.
What a disaster. I know now that it
isn't necessarily the size of the width
of the bevel that matters. I honed
the hell out of this razor, which thank
God was a junker, until I could see
a significant bevel. Then I looked at my
other razor and noticed that the bevel
on it is barely noticeable to the naked eye.
Talk about spine wear!! Oh well, lesson
learned.

John

The width of the bevel is determinded by the thickness of the blade and spine. It should not be determinded by the amount of pressure you use! Some of my sharpest razors have an invisible bevel! They are very hollow ground!

Agreed! Establishing a very good bevel is the foundation.
Without it you can do pyramids or any other approach til the cows come home without success. There is no magic wonder hone or system. But... you have got to know what your looking for in the various tests. Thats the difficult part to learn and to teach.

Great posts - thanks Glen.
I have been figuring that out as a pitfall to my own honing and have been trying to do a much better job at setting that bevel initially (instead of spending hours on the coticule!)

Ronnie - Be aware that some say when you tape the spine, you're creating a steeper angle and the bevel can actually be a double bevel and need to be worn down when you remove the tape and continue in the progression. I don't use tape, so I am only repeating what some say (who recommend against tape).

I've asked a question myself about taping and was basically told that once you tape a spine, you always tape the spine. The tape lifts the spine, albeit a small amount, and sets the bevel at a certain angle. When you remove the tape, the spine drops and the edge picks up off of the hone. Bam! Double bevel.

Maybe taping the spine should be in a whole other thread but since we started to go there, lets just continue on this one.....
My general rules for taping the spine.....

1 Any brand new razor, especially if it belongs to someone else
2 Any NOS razor see rule 1
3. Any Full wedge, I just don't have the time, nor patience, and I only own one of them....
4. Any razor that has a warp problem that I intend to fully restore.... (This does not pertain to using a thin stone, or a rocking, swooping, or modified X pattern thats a horse of a different color)

Other than these reasons, I am not all that keen on taping the spine...
What say you??????

The main point with the tape is that you have to decide if you want to hone the razor completely with or completely without tape. If you decide to go with the tape then you must use it throughout the entire process and every time you touch up the razor on a stone in the future. Otherwise you will not be sharpening the edge because of the steeper bevel angle established with the tape.

Further exploration of the tape....

Lets say for hypothetical conjecture I hone brand new razor "A" for John Doe he uses the razor for 5 months never using a hone, he only uses a daily strop, and twice he uses a pasted paddle strop to refresh the blade, all without taping of course...
Now during the 5th month he no longer can get a shaving edge from the razor, so he sends it to heavydutysg135 "David" to be honed... David takes the razor and checks the bevel, now how would he know that the bevel was established with tape I mean the difference in angle is so slight that it would not be apparent, even looking through a microscope, only one bevel would be seen... So we are back at square one in this thread of establishing a bevel on a 4k or less stone before proceeding on to the polishing stage.... So if when refreshing a blade unless it is the honemiester's personal blade, and he knows how the edge was set up, step one on every honing process should always be "Establish the Bevel" .....
Or is my thinking flawed here?????

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Further exploration of the tape....

Lets say for hypothetical conjecture I hone brand new razor "A" for John Doe he uses the razor for 5 months never using a hone, he only uses a daily strop, and twice he uses a pasted paddle strop to refresh the blade, all without taping of course...
Now during the 5th month he no longer can get a shaving edge from the razor, so he sends it to heavydutysg135 "David" to be honed... David takes the razor and checks the bevel, now how would he know that the bevel was established with tape I mean the difference in angle is so slight that it would not be apparent, even looking through a microscope, only one bevel would be seen... So we are back at square one in this thread of establishing a bevel on a 4k or less stone before proceeding on to the polishing stage.... So if when refreshing a blade unless it is the honemiester's personal blade, and he knows how the edge was set up, step one on every honing process should always be "Establish the Bevel" .....
Or is my thinking flawed here?????

Great question! What I would do is CAREFULLY mark the razor edge with a premanent marker and then with a very fine stone (yellow coticule or escher) I will make a few light passes on the razor without tape. If the marker is completely removed all the way to the edge then I know there is only 1 single bevel established without spine lifting (although it may not be sharp enough) and can easily hone the razor without tape without a lot of work. If the marker is almost completely removed but a thin line remains to the naked eye at the shaving edge then I would know conclusively (no guessing) that there is a small double bevel. I would not know how steep the double bevel was but I would know that it exists. Then I could put one piece of tape on the spine and see if the edge matches up perfectly. If the edge matches up perfectly with the spine then I could either hone the razor with tape throughout the process or completely re-establish the bevel on the course stones before moving on to the polishing stages. To re-establish the bevel can easily take several hundred passes on a Norton 4K so make sure to use the permanent marker or microscope test to see when you are done. Do NOT just assume that it will only take few passes because it will not.

In my collection I have several razors honed without tape and several honed with tape. I keep a list of how each razor is honed so that I can easily match the bevel in the future for touch-ups on a finishing stone without guessing or testing. I am not sure if it makes a big difference if you are using a pasted strop or pasted paddle strop because of the give in the leather, but I always use stones and it definately does make a difference.

David

I completely agree with that David. All of the knives I use are listed in my notebook with the stones used on them and the angles. I don't do anything similar for razors at the moment but I should definitely start keeping some notes to make future honing easier. I would imagine that when it is time to hone again I will have completely forgotten what I did and approximately how long it took for each razor. This should save me a ton of time.

Originally Posted by shotwell1234

I completely agree with that David. All of the knives I use are listed in my notebook with the stones used on them and the angles. I don't do anything similar for razors at the moment but I should definitely start keeping some notes to make future honing easier. I would imagine that when it is time to hone again I will have completely forgotten what I did and approximately how long it took for each razor. This should save me a ton of time.

It isn't that hard to remember if you only have a few razors, but once you really start building up the tribe it gets hard to remember what you did to each individual razor