Thread: Honing a bent razor

I am trying to hone a razor that has a bow in it and it's giving me fits. To describe it's like you grabbed the blade at each end with your thumbs in the middle and pushed with your thumbs. This is creating a bevel that is very wide in the middle of the blade on one side and almost non-existent on the other side.

I am using a 3" wide stone and a normal X pattern doesn't seem to work and a rolling X isn't working either.

Do I need to use a very narrow stone for this blade or is it acceptable to have a different width bevel?

Warped blades do present a challange. I use the edge of the hone (single point of contact) from the heel to about 2/3s to the toe (pulling the blade from the heel off the hone) and then lay the blade on the hone to finish. Use caution that the pressure is very light. Too much pressure will roll the edge. It takes a while to get used to this method but does seem to cut a bit faster and gives execellent results. There are a lot of blades like this and honing this type of blade (along with other less than perfect) is what being a honemiester is all about. Good luck.

p.s. minimum angle just to keep the tow off the hone is all that is required. Make sure you have a good bevel on the edge of the hone and on the blade. Set the bevel on the blade the same way and honing in circles is OK. Set the bevel on the edge of your hone w/ 320 sand paper on a flat surface and make sure there are no chips in the hones bevel when you finish.

I like to roll the blade at the edge of the hone so that the water / slurry is chased along the edge evenly. A well-timed stroke that provides both even and consistent contact between the hone and the entire length of the razor a bit at a time could take some practice and patience though.

i do use it and very helpful.if you have it try or in case if you don't have narrow stone buy putting tape on the back of the stone you can make your hone narrow i hope you got this one.what i mean if you want to hone tip of the blade put tape rest of the blade and hone so on on on.in different location.best working tape it black electric tape for me may be someone know better tapes.good luck
hope this helps

I have broken three good razors that were bent, while attempting to "tap" them straight. If a razor is straight (flat) enough, the X-strokes are enough to pick up the parts of the edge that were not in good enough contact during the "no pressure" circle strokes, as Lynn Abrahms describes them. I bought a Dovo 6/8 Best Quality. It was sharp from toe to heel and great shaver. Later attempting to hone it, I found it to be badly bent. I failed in 6 attempts to hone it, but since it was perfectly honed when I bought it, I knew it could be done. Finally, I did combined circle-X-strokes. Think of 20 circle strokes as the razor is drawn across the 3" wide stone, however instead of the razor going across, make it go diagonally across till at the end only about 1/3-1/4 of it is still on the stone. I guide the razor by gently pressing with index finger and thumb at the spine near the toe. This is to ensure that the spine and edge are always in contact and there is not very much pressure. The method worked beautifully. I could shave the hair on my arm from toe to heel after Norton 4000. After Norton 8000, hanging hair test also worked. I cleaned and stropped it and found the best HHT performance yet. Just a mere contact seemed to cut the hair near the toe. HHT works near the heel but not as well. Next time I will give the heel part more attention by starting the stroke with a little more pressure near the heel.

For a bent blade like that I use a heel forward X stroke with a roll that follows the bend in the razor while running the edge from heel to toe off the edge of the hone. If that makes any sense. I am thinking it is like what hoglahoo was describing in his post.

Yea, definitely do not try to tap it straight unless it bugs you enough to want to sacrifice it to the shaving gods.

Bob

Bob,

Tapping is not recommended, I agree. The ones that break like a cold bar of chocolate are Boker and Swedish steel razors. I will not mention the ones I have had success with. I understand your method and use it during the X-strokes. However IMO this Dovo razor had to honed from the beginning, with circle strokes. So I combined the two. Do you recommend honing using only X-strokes?

Amir

Amir

Just a beginner at this whole honing thing so I can't in all honesty really recommend anything other than to say what I have used. So far I have found that I am using mostly some form of X stroke heel leading to match the imperfections of the razor and all have had slightly different imperfections.

I think I have only had 2 razors that were near enough perfect to use the a straight across X stroke, without heel leading, or doing circles straight up and back on.

In other words I just experiment around to find something that works for a particular razor. I really don't know what I am doing but I am doing sorta thing and it seems to be working out.

Bob