Thread: Need advice to hone away jagged edge

I'm in the learning stages of maintaining my own razors.
I use razors that I bought honed and shave ready.
After a few weeks of use I have attempted to freshen them up
with a blue/yellow combination and a pasted .5 grit paddle strop.

Looking through the RS handheld microscope, the edge on the
bevel is uniform and straight along most of the length as
shown on the right, but in some areas the edge is jagged
as shown on the left of this illustration.
The razors shave ok with no razor burn, but they don't feel
as sharp as when I first got them.

What steps do I need to take do to fix those jagged edges?
I have a DMT 1200, blue/yellow hones and a 3.0/1.0/.50
TM paddle strop to work with.

GeNn

That looks to me exactly like the kind of chips you get from corrosion. When you look through the microscope is the steel dark around the jagged area?

Your razor may have been shave ready but with some patches of corroded steel just waiting to start breaking up.

Without corrosion it's hard for me to picture getting that kind of edge from simply refreshing with a coticule and pasted paddle, unless you used a lot of pressure.

At any rate you'll probably need to use the 1200 to get them out. Make sure to do even strokes so as not to screw up your bevel, and check your progress often with the microscope. You can use the magic marker to test that you're getting the whole edge evenly.

Then you'll need to do 50+ passes each on the blue and yellow stones.

If the chips are very very small, you could use the yellow with lots of slurry and a bit of pressure (and a lot of patience) and get them out that way. But if you have corrosion of any kind I really would recommend getting it out with the DMT.

Acting on Lynn's suggestion, I have had success honing out micro chips with sets of 10 strokes on a Norton 8000. I have also done it with a coticule for really tiny problem areas. I would use your yellow (coticule) and do the same, examining the edge between sets. After the chips are gone, or at least reduced to an acceptable level, I use a pasted flat bed hone (chromium oxide) to smooth out the edge.

I am sure the honemeisters will add more substantive advice, but this has been my experience.

BTW, fantastic illustration. Did you do it?

When I have an edge that looks like the left one in your picture I use 100 grit sandpaper, becaust I don't have your DMT. I would hone very gently with the DMT 1200 checking often to get the edge back to smooth. Then hone as suggested with the Coticles (I dont use that either). I find that once the edge is back to smooth, like the right picture, its pretty easy to get it sharp, but untill then you just keep spinning your wheels.

Thanks for all the input. I guess now is a good time as any to use my brand new DMT 1200 for the first time. I'll try the heavy slurry first on the Belgium and see where it gets. I had already done quite a few passes on the blue/yellow and the jagged spots remain. I have some e-bay cheap razors that I'll practice on the DMT-1200 before I try it on my regular razors. My touch on the hones with a razor is not all that good yet but I'm getting better.

Bill, the Illustration is a scanned picture from an old barber's book. I used paint shop pro to cut/paste and edit the exploded view to show what I needed to show. For the jagged effect I just drew it in.

GeNn