Thread: Hone wear question

Hi,i picked up this str8 from ebay it seems to have a lot of spine wear,pics were blury .I ran the blade accross my nail with water and it slides across freely.my question is should the spine be taped and will i have any problems getting it sharp if i do since it was not taped before. This is all new to me so i dont now if that is considerd a lot of wear or not.

Well, personally I'd just go ahead and hone it without any tape. Others might disagree. I have a couple of razors like that and I figure there's little point in trying to save them now. If you do use tape, you'll get an edge faster as you are increasing the honing angle and reducing the amount of metal you have to remove on the bevel. On the other hand, you'll have to either tape the spine each time you need to hone it or hone it again without tape after honing it with tape to reset the bevel to the no tape angle. Typically, you'll do this only when you need to do serious honing to remove nicks/chips. Otherwise about the only razors you would always use tape on would be the Damascus type blades where you don't want to ruin the looks of the pattern where the spine touches the hone.

Regards

Christian

With that narrow a blade, tape will change the bevel quite a bit. So if you go the tape route you may want to stay there.

Depending on the condition of the edge there may be no need to worry about it. A fine hone doesn't remove much metal, while a mid range one will to some extent.

Hi Joe:

Here's my take on your question and some of it is theoretical to illustrate the concept:

Let's assume for illustrative purposes that we're talking about a razor previously honed without taping the spine and assume that razor's edge was already keen, tuned and shaving sharp (I know your Boker isn't since you'd said so, but humor me). By taping the spine and making only a very small number of passes, you'd create a micro-bevel imperceptible to the eye. Like woodworkers with their chisels and plane irons, straight razor users are now reporting that they're reaping benefits from micro-bevels on their razors. Manufactured DE blades that I've viewed under magnification have up to three bevels. So, with a good edge, the answer to your question is yes, taping the spine on a previously untaped razor is fine with one catch: As has been mentioned here before, if you tape to start honing, you MUST tape all the way through the entire honing process on all stones and you can not remove tape on the final polish stones. Why? Here's a crude illustration I made before the server crash showing what occurs at edge level if you remove tape and try to polish the edge:



The top image is with tape. The bottom image is with tape removed with the intent on polishing the edge. The problem is, the actual edge where the two planes meet is lifted off the stone. You could try tape to hone untaped to polish, but you'd just end up feeling like this:


Now...enough theory. For YOUR Boker given that it's dull, go head and tape the spine if you want, you're going to have to create ("set") a new bevel and possibly work hard at doing it if need be. Just remember, if you start with tape when honing, you have to tape the entire way. You don't have to keep the tape on to strop since there's enough flexion during stropping for the strop to adjust to the blade's contours.

I didn't stumble on this fact, I'm merely repeating what others like Heavyduty have already made us aware of and thankfully so.

Personally, for a non-collectible razor meant to be shaved with, I could care less about hone wear and on a non-damascus no frills razor IMO a razor looks better with both the bevel and the spine edge glinting like a mirror in the light. I like it.

Chris L

Thx for the advice and for the diagrams ,i am going to take the easy way i will not tape the spine..As 1 of u mentioned it is not a collectors item i plan on using this razor.Thx for the in depth info very usefull for me since this is all new to me.

I would strongly advise against taping the spine. If you want to experiment, go ahead, as I'm sure you'll learn a lot. Before you do it though, look at the edge under at least 60 x magnification so you can see the difference after you're done. The Radio Shack illuminated microscope is perfect for this.