Thread: Honing "holes"

I have a beautiful filarmonica razor that I godd for cheap at a flea market, and it shaved reasonably well when I bought/stropped it.
Then it began to cause me grief in the form of razor burn.
After some time, I finally equipped myself with a really good tony miller strop setup, chromium oxide on balsa setup, wonderful norton hones, a handheld microscope - the works.
NOW I see what is causing my grief - literally.
It seems that my blade edge is in fact quite uniform in bevel/polish, but there are these holes that "appear". one hole has been "breached" by the edge, so now it looks like an omega ( Ω ) under the microscope. After much thought I decided to try to hone away this and other irregularities in my razor's edge, only to be surprised by the emergence of one or more other holes! These start to appear well away from the edge, up the bevel, but still before the rest of the blade past where the bevel begins.
I have no idea how to address this issue, and it seems that only more of these holes will start to appear as material is removed.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance

reset the bevel and make sure the hole is gone before you move on to higher grits.

It seems to me that you have problems with rust on the edge that penetrated to the other side of the bevel and it has eaten the metal away.
It looks like you'll have to hone the "holes" out of the edge, reset the bevel and make the razor shave ready again.

If they appear up the bevel you'll have to remove a lot of metal away.

I'm certainly not an expert, that's just my opinion based on your description of the problem.

I believe that more experienced people will chime in.

Originally Posted by Robert1988

It seems to me that you have problems with rust on the edge that penetrated to the other side of the bevel and it has eaten the metal away.
It looks like you'll have to hone the "holes" out of the edge, reset the bevel and make the razor shave ready again.

If they appear up the bevel you'll have to remove a lots of metal away.

I'm certainly not an expert, that's just my opinion based on your description of the problem.

I believe that more experienced people will chime in.

+1 on the above. It sounds like there is/was pitting on the bevel that may have been polished to being shiny so that it wasn't apparent to the naked eye. Unless you can get to good steel it will keep doing the swiss cheese thing.

+1 on the above. Go to the lowest grit stone you have, put tape on the spine and start setting the bevel. Keep going until the pitting on the edge disappears. At that point, change stones and start honing for sharpness. Remember though, if you make it through the honing and finally shave with it, the next time you have to hone it you might have the same issue.

Good luck,

Ray

Thanks for the input, and it seems that there is concensus, keep removing material until the swiss cheese effect vanishes. Thanks jimmyHAD for that descriptor.

Sounds like a "rotten" edge. Also known as inter-granular (or inner granular) corrosion. Here's a pdf link; if you want more detail on it. You can often hone past it, but not always.