Thread: 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.

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? 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.

Wedges are a bear to hone, one question??? did you tape the spine????
You can discuss this till the cows come home, but setting a bevel on a W&B wedge on a 4k is going to take TIME and a ton of metal off.... Personally I would rather be taking that metal off the edge where it will do some good rather than off the spine where it does absolutely nothing for you but clog up the stone.....

Now if you did tape the spine then you just have a few hours of solid honing to go
and yes you have the right idea stay on that 4k until you have an edge from heel to toe....

Hi Glen

Initially I was taping the spine yes using heavy duty masking tape. However the tape kept getting rubbed off. The stickiness of the tape would catch on the hone. It meant that I couldnt actually move the damn razor along the hone.

So for about half the time I was using tape and half of it I havent. This will change things I know, but what else can I do?

Plastic electrical tape is what you need....
It will not hurt to add tape, the 3M brand is the most consistent I have found but any will work....

Sorry I should have been clear. It is plastic electrical tape. Not the paper masking tape I am now thinking of.

Is the tape wearing out in just one spot on the spine????

Not wearing out. The edges of the tape fray up. They are sticky and when they get pulled back they catch on the hone. This would be easier to show you rather than describe. But its 1.30am atm and i'm off to sleep. Maybe I could show you somehow some other time. Maybe i'll try making a Youtube video.

Sandy - I use the plastic electrical tape as it tends to stay down and not fray like the stuff that looks like it has fibres in it.

Even on a Norton a wedge can take a while. I like to use analogy (and double entendre, but that is another story) wherever possible. A sculptor will whack away rock with a big hammer and chisel until she gets close to the general shape she is after. Then she will go more carefully and/or use finer tools.

On a wedge (or any razor for that matter, it is just more obvious on a wedge) I feel it does not matter how you remove the metal when heading toward the bevel being created. So I tend to hone in circles, use a bit of pressure, etc until the bevel gets close (thumb nail test is my favourite for that). Once I am close, then I start using a more "proper" technique. That metal has to go anyway - who cares how you got rid of it?

That is not to say you should not be careful. All I am saying is that you don't have to go down, flip, up, flip, down, flip, up, flip...... with the pressure of a feather on the wind for 5 hours on a bread-knifed wedge, or whatever, to get the bevel created.

James.

I have a wedge type razor that I ground the edge completely away on a wheel and made it square. I have spent several (5-7) hours honing, and am just now starting to shave arm hairs. I think you should get a 220 or 1000 grit Norton, that will reduce the time, and just keep at it.

I kind of disagree on the suggestion of the 220 Norton. I have one and have occasionally used it on completely buggered blades but the thing is so soft that I think I actually make faster progress on the Norton 1000. I really should get a DMT 1200 for bevel setting but I already have a DMT 325 and a DMT 220 and I'd rather not spend 60 bucks on yet another DMT. I definitely will get one for bevel setting after I wear out my Norton 1000 in a couple more years.