Setting a bevel on a Norton 4K
OK then, what gives?
I have tried twice now but with very little success.
I bought a beautiful Wade and Butcher Smiling wedge from AaronX a while back. Its a gorgeous razor and I cant wait to try it properly. However when I got it it wasnt honed in any way. No bevel, nothing. Now he told me it would be like this so I was neither surprised nor let down. I understood that it was up to me to set the bevel.
So I took it to my Norton Combo. I only have 2 hones; a Norton combo and a japanese natural finishing stone. No problem I thought. I took it to the 4K side. I did alot of work on it and eventually saw what appeared to me to be a bevel. Great! I thought, and turned the hone over to work on the 8K. Many passes on that and its looking good. I even have a look at it under my microscope and it looks good. The fact that I dont know what I should be looking for is of no hinderence to me here. I wiped it down and finished it on the japanese hone. After much work and then some careful stropping I am pleased with how it looks. It appears to me to be an excellent bevel!
Then I do some tests on it. It is terrible. :rant:
Seriously, it doesnt pass HHT, TNT, TPT and if you think i'm putting it near my face think again! I wouldnt use this thing for anything! I mean it couldnt open a letter and I doubt it would successfully spread butter!
AAAAAAAARGH!!!
OK I think. Time to calm down, go back to basics and try again. What could be wrong? I think hard and ask around on the chat. General consensus is that I should do a felt tip test. I will do that but first I will work on my hone. It appears to have alot of crap embedded in it. Time to lap it.
Lapping took me a while. Alot of stuff to remove. However now it looks as it did when I first got it. Bright white on one side, bright yellow on the other. I clean it off, soak the hone in clean water and get the W+B.
This time I decide to stay on the 4K until I can start to feel SOME kind of edge. SOME sort of sharpness. Surely there should be something? I start at it and oddly the hone very quickly gets dirty again. Not as dirty as it was before but there remains a marked difference. It appears the discolourisation is caused by the metal being removed from the W+B. I take this to be a good sign.
However, after honing for an hour on the 4K side and still getting nothing I am beginning to lose the will to live. This is never a good thing when one is holding a straight razor. Perhaps fortunately for me I doubt if it got so bad that I wanted to top myself using the razor I doubt it would be up to the job. I swer, there is a clear and obvious angle on the edge so I presume that is the bevel. But I can run my fingertip vigourously along the edge and get nothing more than a hot finger.
What is doing wrong here? :rant:Should I take it to some 1200 grit wet/dry sandpaper? I really dont want to send it away. I need to be able to learn to do this myself.
Somebody please help before I do something I regret. :( :chop: