Flat honing a frowning blade

[JimmyHAD]

I picked up this old Puma from the bay this past week. The one pic with the hand holding the razor is from the auction and although I didn't notice it when bidding you can make out the frown ahead of the heel.

So I was disappointed that I had to deal with it and I got out the DMT E 1200 figuring I would breadknife it. Looking at it more closely I found there was no chipping on the edge and I hated to go through the amount of work that breadknifing entails on the back end.

I had discussed frowning blades and breadknifing with Randydance awhile back and he had said that it is a last resort for him.... if I remember correctly... I don't want to put words in Randy's mouth and then quote him.

So I decided to flat hone it. There is an excerpt from a barber manual here in the SRP Wiki that I am always referring to. If you take a look at it there is an explanation of how to hone a razor using the x stroke to avoid a frown. It is said that some folks end up creating a frown in a blade by applying too much pressure when using the x stroke.

The manual tells how to avoid that by putting a bit of pressure at the heel at the beginning of the stroke and at the point at the end of the stroke with little or no pressure at the center of the blade you will avoid creating a frown and maintain a slight smile which is a desirable profile in a shaving edge.

A TNT revealed that the edge was butter knife dull so I began using the fore mentioned method to remove the frown and set a bevel on the diamond plate. I made progress on the plate in getting rid of most of the frown so when the edge got to where it would pop arm hair I went to my narrow Norton single grit 4k. This is a set of Nortons I got from Tools For Working Wood thanks to ChrisL. They are 8x11/2 and ideal for this sort of problem blade.

I continued to sharpen on the 4k and when the TPT felt really good I got the 8k into the picture and did a conservative pyramid and then stropped and shaved. Got a really good shave. Randy suggested to me early on in my honing that shaving off of the 4/8 is a good idea before moving up the grit ladder to finish with a finer hone. This gives you a really accurate assessment of how sharp you've gotten the razor without the finer hone smoothing the edge further. Anyhow as seen in my pic the frown is gone with a minimal removal of metal and probably a lot less time and work than would have been required had I breadknifed the blade. The bevel is a bit wider towards the point but the razor is just fine. The following day I took it to a mystery finishing hone and gave it 10 laps and got an even better, as in smoother, shave.