Originally Posted by
English
If you take a kitchen knife and put three layers of tape on the spine and then place it on a hone, the edge will not touch the hone. Infact you have to rock it like a seesaw.
Now translate this to a precise razor straight edge and tell me it doesn't matter and I will say you are wrong.
Now when we are talking about one layer of tape, I agree, the angles are probably not significant.
I don't use tape unless I want to deliberately adjust the bevel spine angles for example on a full wedge.
I don't hone razors for money but I can see that a professional honer would not want to damage a customers brand new prize possession.
But for me, the need to see a shiny well honed spine bevel is as important as seeing a sharp edge.
If the spine bevel is not shiny and even, the edge will be poor. If you tape the spine, I don't know , but I feel cheated out of half of the required information.
Just my opinion. But I for one do not think taping a spine adds any value other than a protection effect. In fact I think it must always detract a little from the manufacturers original geometric specification.
Bottom line, one piece of tape doesn't really matter, but any more does.