Thread: Honing My First Wedge

Originally Posted by bjrn

I was thinking of that when looking at a Reynolds wedge I have. When you tape the spine of a reasonably hollow razor, the hone touches the tape along a line on top of the spine, but when you tape a wedge the hone will touch the tape where the tape ends.

So with a hollow ground, even if you tape it slightly off-centre, as long as the spine "edges" are covered, you're fine, but with a wedge if you don't tape it the same every time you take it to a hone you'll get different angles, no? Granted, the differences will probably be small, but still.

That's a great thought, but in my experience that's not the way it works in practice. Almost every "wedge" that I have seen (and I have seen a LOT) have at least a little bit of hollowing; many of what people consider wedges are at least single concave 1/4 hollow. You can see this if you lay the spine and edge of the razor on a flat surface (there will be some daylight in between). This means when you tape a "wedge" and hone it, the hone will be contacting at the spine not the bottom of the tape. The wear marks that the hone leaves on the tape will confirm this. When I hone wedges I almost always use tape because it can take a lot of spine wear to set the initial edge.

David

This is something I've always wondered about, actually. If you have a proper, full, complete wedge, why would you bother honing it as if it's a hollow? What's the point of using the spine as an angle guide? Why not treat it like a very fat knife and use an angle guide tool or something?

James.