Thread: Honing Geneva razors

i have exact brand it is in the mineral oil bottle i will pick it up and hone tomorrow .let you know how it goes.thank you

Originally Posted by joke1176

I have a few Geneva Pyramid razors and 2 were easy to hone... one was/is a nightmare. I may have to bust it out and give it another working over to see what happens now.

Perhaps I lucked out with a series of nightmares? I'm looking forward to trying one again.

Originally Posted by hi_bud_gl

i have exact brand it is in the mineral oil bottle i will pick it up and hone tomorrow .let you know how it goes.thank you

Why is it in a mineral oil bottle? Do you leave it soaking in it?

Originally Posted by Joed

Do you know any more about the brand differences?

Unfortunately I don't. All I know is that the ones with pyramids on them take forever to remove steel. The antler version is a cake walk in comparison. I suspect the pyramids are stainless steel. They're usually pretty clean IME. But I'm not sure, its just a theory.

I have never honed a Geneva. They're pretty rare here in Europe.
So I can't really share specific experience.
However, I do run into trouble sometimes with a razor. It is basically always the same problem: once I get a good and clean bevel, I fail on getting the edge "refined" up to my standards. I do get it sort of shaveready, but just not as good as usual. Whenever the problem occurs, it goes along with a small strip of less parallel scratches at the very tip of the bevel. It's odd: the scratches are the same width, but they only do not appear as ordered as on the rest of the bevel, running slightly more in criss cross directions. It only, but not always, happens on wider bevels. (Next time, I'll try to shoot a picture).
Now, I've never been shy of doing extra laps on a hone, so after doing ridiculous amounts of laps, ruling out any neglected work on a previous hone, I am strongly convinced that it is caused by some anomaly that happens while the razor is guided over the hone. I tried lapping the hones, but that didn't change anything, and I made sure it isn't in my stroke.
After having noticed how extremely flexible the thin part of a razor's edge is, I came up with a hypothesis. I believe it might be possible that such wider bevels get sucked to the surface of the hone, and are submitted to some kind of turbulence from being sucked, released, sucked again, released, etc... The result being some kind of fluttering. Without access to a high speed magnifying camera, I can't support this with any evidence.
But nevertheless, my workaround works like a charm.
Whenever I run in this trouble (sometimes weeks go by without it), I'll complete the bevel without any use of tape (I don't tape under normal circumstances). Once I have a complete bevel, I attach one, sometimes two (depending on the width of the razor) layers of tape and re-cut a smaller bevel of about 0.5mm. Next I run my regular honing progression on that new and narrow bevel. So far, this method has never let me down. The razor can be rehoned, just like any razor, and if the bevel start growing too wide at some point, all that needs to be done, is to hone a few laps without tape, to reduce it again "from the other side".

Thought, I'd share. If you recognize any of this in your struggle with the Geneva, I really recommend that you give it a shot sometimes.

Kind regards,
Bart.

In my experience most of the Pyramid versions are plated (I think with chrome), the steel is tough, and the edge (which is not plated) tends to microchip on the lower grit and hard high grit stones.
So I set the bevel on the lower grit stone and ignore any microchips, then I spend a bit longer on the N8K with slurry to remove the microchips and finish...


Hope this helps