Honing a Wedge for the First Time
Over the weekend I honed two W&B monster wedges. Both very unconcave. One has a true smile and the other an interesting shape that I wouldn't call a smill (maybe a smile out of one corner of the mouth). 7/8 and 8/8s roughly. I went Shapton 1k, yellow coticule slurry, yellow coticule water, yellow coticule lather.
Shaved with one - very comfy shave but not close enough. I suspect I'm not getting the bevel acute enough.
1. Is taping the spine the answer - does that make it easier to set a sharp bevel?
2. Am I likely to have any trouble setting bevel with taped spine so soon after setting bevel without tape?
A Story of Honing two Wedges
I thought you might enjoy this
I finished up the restores on these two W&B wedges for Dwessel
#1 A heavy 7/8 Fine India steel
#2 A true W&B 6/8 wedge
Now I did these the exact same way, with two totally different results. Both had gone through the tumbler so were completely dull.. I started with 3 layers of tape and a 220 Norton to re-cut a bevel, then went down to 1 layer of tape and the 1k Norton to set a proper bevel, here is where things changed #1 went straight forward through the stones and strops and I test shaved a sweet edge....
Now that #2 PITA is still giving me a hard time I will mess with it tonight and see what happens....
Two lessons here:
One, is that some razors are just different, they require you to think outside the box...
Two, STOP don't push things, whether it be shaving or honing if it isn't going right just STOP take a breather and then approach it again later....
It might not require me to do anything different tonight, it could have been that I was just getting frustrated, like I always say just when you think you have it all figured out these things will throw you a curve ball....
God I just LOVE straight razors !!!! :D