Thread: regular blades

I have posted this before. my honing i have good confidence and get very good eges thanxs to this site setting bevel removing chips no problems nower days etc. The one thing i still not 100 percent about is whilst honing regular blades new or old keeping them flat in x pattern on flat lapped hones such as nortons or naturals etc is that i watch the wave infront of my edge making sure as performing x stroke the wave runs evenly along full lenght of my hone which it does then i perform black marker test and low and behold marker is always left at very toe or heel either just one side and the other side it could be just toe or heel which realy bugs me and baffles me. I try then 45 degree angle this does'nt work for me slight rolling x and just slight catches those parts and i find it easier to hone that way.The point is we are suposed to hone flat unless blade is real warped or a real smiler. I spoke to a honmeister and he says the very cutting edge should'nt be sharp or refrase does'nt have to be sharp at the very toe and heal i'm talking very ends or begining. Do any of you guys find this problem?

I have the special idition silver wing i black maked the edge and found same problem except a quarter down the blade on one side only just of the middle the marker was not being removed but the water was being pushed along that part of the edge this real;y baffled me the oposite side to that part of the edge the marker totaly removed it strange but my last ti was exactly the same this does shave well. To be honest the bevel is not very well unifirmed i can tell by traces of marker being left whilst honing flat. I took this razor to 1k and i would say literaly in that section where marker is not being removed ith naked eye when i use 30 k loop i can see just the very egde and i mean just is being removed. this razor i brought was purchased shave ready by the vendor and it was i think he only had to give it 10 laps on 10k naniwa so it must of been pritty good out of the box any way. any advice or if any one as experianced this info would be apreciated i no rolling x solves these problems but i'm thinking is my tecnique i even light hold toe down toe just to make sure razor is flat i don't normaly do that.

If you keep the blade flat on the hone and the marker does not come off after say 5 strokes it means that the edge is not in contact with the hone. This could just be because the edge is rounded or the blade is warped. Narrow hones (like the vintage Thuringen you bought from me) are better than wide hones. If the middle bit of one side of the edge keeps the marker on this most likely is due to warpage.

Not all vendors have a honemeister available, stories go of people getting blades sharpened with an electric grinding wheel.

The thing is i have 3inch wide hones for more heavy work like i say slight tilt works but surley out 0f 30 razors they carn't be warped i understand most razors i have do have slight curve at heal and toe .

Gary,
I too have had the same issue you are experiencing. Kees is correct in pointing out that the unremoved line indicates that that part of the blade is not touching the stone. So what next? How do you get that part to touch the stone? What technique do you use to give full contact to the blade? These were the same questions I had. Now I am by no means an expert on this forum, and I do hope that someone with more experience will chime in and give you some better advice then I, so here goes. I have 3 razors with warped blade issues and had the same problem getting the full length of the blade sharp from one end to the other. I tried everything I could to get them consistently sharp and decided I had to be crazy since the definition of crazy is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. I reread all the threads I could and watched all the video's I including Lynn's CD and suddenly discovered that there were two things I could change that might give me a different outcome.

The first was a simple phrase in a post by both JimmyHAD and Leighton. They said, basically, when coming off the bevel stone the blade should pop hairs at all points and if it didn't go back until it does. That finally made sense. If the blade couldn't pop hair at that stage, why would it do so at another?

The second was to literally follow the statement of using as little pressure as possible. My idea of "as little as possible" seems to have been perhaps 2 - 3#.

So I sat down one weekend with the 3 warped razors and started to try and see if I could solve MY issues. The stones I had to work with were a DMT 1200, Naniwa 1000, BBW/Coticule combo with slurry stone and a Norton 4000/8000 combo. I put 1 layer of tape on the spine of each razor and do so on all my razors anyway and added a black line to the edge. I started with the DMT and used absolutly no pressure. On the convex side of the blade I put my left finger on the spine - with no pressure - and rolled the blade from heel to toe. The rolling part was done without notice. Just barely starting on the heel and finishing on the toe. It didn't take long to remove the black completely. I tested the razor and had to touchup either the toe or the heel and tested the blade. After about 20 passes or so I had the blade popping hairs at every point, hurray. I then moved to either the bbw/coticule or the Norton and finished by progression checking the sharpness along the way. When I was finished I lapped 15 strokes on CrOx and checked the sharpness by holding the blade above the hair on my arm and it popped them all along the blade and then I stropped the blade on canvas and then leather.

All 3 razors shaved wonderfully and held their edge rather well. This exercise didn't go as easy as it sounds but after several tries the results were incredibly different. The only problem I find with using the hair popping method and several razors to hone is that when I get in the shower and wet my legs and look down, they look like an arial view of a 9 hole golf course. Is there a better way to check for sharpness? At any rate, again please DO NOT take this information as instructive. I am just sharing my observations and experience and hope that someone with more experience can answer your issue more succently so this thread doesn't stop.

Regards,

A very eloquent description of the rolling X-pattern that's certainly worth a try.

What your saying is true if i was to start on heel and then finish on the toe slight raised which is what we call rolling x stroke on the srp it does remove balck marker instantly i just find most blades need this style of sstroke if you want to get i nice uniformed bevel from very heal and toe and 9 times out of ten i use a slight rolling x but watching the ripple in front of the edge i find misleading as edge may create an even wave along the edge but i find it does nt mean you are hiting the hole edge and the heal is not on the hone long enough so i find heals don't always reach sharpness as quik as the rest of the
blade especial on 3in wide hone. Thats why i like the marker test its quik and you can see what is happening straight away.

Originally Posted by gary haywood

What your saying is true if i was to start on heel and then finish on the toe slight raised which is what we call rolling x stroke on the srp it does remove balck marker instantly i just find most blades need this style of sstroke if you want to get i nice uniformed bevel from very heal and toe and 9 times out of ten i use a slight rolling x but watching the ripple in front of the edge i find misleading as edge may create an even wave along the edge but i find it does nt mean you are hiting the hole edge and the heal is not on the hone long enough so i find heals don't always reach sharpness as quik as the rest of the
blade especial on 3in wide hone. Thats why i like the marker test its quik and you can see what is happening straight away.

Gary,
First off there is no reason why the heel needs to leave the stone while rolling the blade. I roll the blade with it totally perpindicular to the stone, with it at a 45deg. angle to the stone and never have any part of the blade go off the stone. Second, and I think this is most important for me, marking the blade is only one of several indicators to when it is ok to move to the next step. If I am honing a blade with a marked line on it the only indication its removal means to me is that I am obtaining full coverage while honing the blade. It doesn't tell me or indicate anything else. From that point on I have other indicators to watch for. Hope this helps.

I was speaking to Randy and he told me he is using the rolling x all of the time now. I am too unless the blade is absolutely flat and with a perfectly straight profile.

I have posted this link here many times. It is the excerpt from the barber's manual circa 1961. Those guys knew something about honing a razor. Gary, being a barber you would appreciate this.

The method that they teach for keeping a razor from getting a frown while using the x pattern is similar to the rolling x and I do this with many razors. I agree with the writer of the tutorial that a slightly smiling blade is preferable to a totally straight profile.

Anyhow, using this method works for me in getting the whole blade from point to heel sharp.

I can remeber you posting this a while back and to be onest the reason i posted was to see how many people use or have to use rolling x because thats my point i find my self using it every time and it works perfect for me to i watched heavy duty hone and states he starts with heal down always even on regular blades unless they are very flat so long as the blades spine as flat or stays in contact with hone i find it works great for me and i actualy find it easier to hone like this rather than totaly flat honing.

Originally Posted by gary haywood

I took this razor to 1k and i would say literaly in that section where marker is not being removed ith naked eye when i use 30 k loop i can see just the very egde and i mean just is being removed.

I have quoted from the last part of your post, because I don't know how to highlight it in a different colour.
As long as the marker is being removed at the very, very edge, then the bevel is set. Whether this is visible wit the naked eye,at 30x or even 100x is irrelevant.
It's that old chestnut about less is more again. Once you sharpen the very edge, anything more is just a waste of steel. It is, after all, only the very edge of the blade that will take an edge.

Connor