Thread: Setting the bevel

I'm new. Get that out of the way.

I want to learn to set the bevel. I have absolutely no honing skills YET. I'm not even sure of the vernacular of sharpening but I figure the bevel is the place you will end up putting the sharp on your razor. I bought a nice glass bed on MDF and some good sand paper. My question is how to set a bevel? How do you assure that you have one side of the bevel the same as the other? How do you know when you are done?

I didnt see any threads that spoke to this subject, even in a search. I would have thought there would be many.

Thanks,

Geoff in Baltimore

I'm new myself, but from what I can understand, so long as the spine is nice and even, the bevel will "set itself" as the angle of attack of the blade on the hone is decided by the spine.

The art of honing, I gather, is recognizing and compensating for irregularities in the spine. That, and of course dealing with all sorts of warps and discrepancies in the blade itself.

When I'm setting the bevel, I usually use a 1K Norton hone. As many razors as I do in a session I need things to cut quickly. I use the Radio Shack microscope and I check frequently to see if bevel is evenly formed from the edge to the top of the bevel. The edge should be showing that is being honed. I use only the pressure on the blade that it takes to keep the blade flat on the hone. This way if there is a warp in the blade ist shows up then and not later. If the bevel is set properly, the rest of the honing is much more predictable. Once again, hones must be flat. I flatten mine after six of seven razors. It is much easier to do a lite touch up then a full blown grind.

I see the microscope is a real aid. I have been using a 3 diopter looking glass. Its hardly adequate. I looked at the Radio Shack model on line and thought "what can you really see in a $15 scope?" Ill have to get one.

Originally Posted by geoffreyt

I didnt see any threads that spoke to this subject, even in a search. I would have thought there would be many.

Thanks,

Geoff in Baltimore

If you go to the basic honing section and read the stickies, you'll get loads of info.

Or, click here http://straightrazorpalace.com/showthread.php?t=19483

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

If you go to the basic honing section and read the stickies, you'll get loads of info.

Or, click here http://straightrazorpalace.com/showthread.php?t=19483

Thanks, thats a very good guide. I can use that! A micro scope and the marker tests are perfect to guide me.

I use a micro scope, it is not necessary to get a good hone. It just helps me to be sure and not have to guess what's going on. I've honed some blades that look terrible under the scope but were great shavers. If you are having trouble with a blade it can be a very useful tool to diagnose the problem.

"Setting the bevel" really means that you're spending some extra time honing the razor to remove damage, like chips or a rounded-over edge. Or sometimes the existing bevel won't be at the right angle relative to the spine--if someone honed the razor with the spine raised off the honing surface, for example. It's not fundamentally different from the rest of the honing process, except that you're using a coarser hone and removing more material.

What you're doing is establishing a basic edge that's free of damage and angled in such a way that the edge makes contact with the hone when the edge and spine are flat on the hone.

Make sense?

Sometimes this process is unnecessary. If the last person to hone the razor knew what they were doing, you will spend little or no time setting the bevel. An eBay beater can take a few hours of work, even for an experienced honer.

Josh

Originally Posted by JoshEarl

An eBay beater can take a few hours of work, even for an experienced honer.

It can certainly take me a few hours, Josh, but I'm surprised (reassured?) that it can also take you this long. Would you say that most of that time is spent removing oxidized steel and/or frowns? When the steel is in good shape and there's no big frown or anything, I've found the process to be very fast. DMTs cut.

Oxidation is my latest demon; I used to be lenient about it but you pay the price in the quality of the shave. A squiggle here and a squiggle there can add ninety minutes to the honing process; sometimes I'm tempted to drop to the 320 DMT.

It definitely varies. For an average eBay razor in decent shape, I'm usually done in about 10 or 15 minutes. The first 8-12 minutes is spent on the coarser hones, resetting the edge. I've gotten pretty fast with my strokes, so I can probably go from 1200 grit to shave-ready in about three or four minutes. I should time myself for the heck of it.

But then you get that wedge with a chip in the edge. Sometimes a big, meaty wedge will take three hours of careful grinding to reshape the edge and get all the nasties out.

The other day I honed up a Dubl Duck 6/8 that had a 1/16" deep chip ouf of the edge. On that one, I used my belt grinder to get rid of the chip, but resetting the edge had to be done by hand. That took maybe 30 or 40 minutes, total. Again, the last three or four minutes was all it took to go from 1200 grit to shave ready.

The process goes faster when you know what you're looking for without doing a bunch of tests. I know exactly what a 1200-grit edge should look like, so I don't waste time on the lower grits once I get the edge fixed. I can also spot problem areas and fix them quickly with circles or a little back-and-forth action and a tiny bit of extra pressure.

It gets easier; it never gets easy.

Josh