Thread: One edge is sharper than the other

khaos,

When one side of the razor doesn't make contact with the hone all the way to the edge but the other side does, the razor is left with one polished bevel which is flat all the way to the edge, and one that is not.

The above diagrams show a pretty ridiculous case. It looks like someone is using 10 layers of tape on one side of the spine only.

Now, a dull razor is one that is rounded at the edge, is it not? If however, one bevel is not making hone contact all the way to the edge, that side of the edge is going to be unpolished and remain rounded. The other side may sharpen just fine, but the rounding on the dull side will prevent any angle of attack from being capable of cutting hair with any ease. If I cut an egg in half, you'll see a sharp divide if you look from the side which was cut, but you'll see a gradual roundedness from the other side of the egg, as though it was never cut at all.

The mathematics presented above are fine, but they don't represent the issue at hand (which is one bevel rounding away from the flat bevel at such great angle it is incapable of effectively cutting hairs)

edit: I see your last post. Of course it depends how dull the razor was to begin with and of course how much more good contact one bevel spent on the hone than the other bevel. Gradually, even if one bevel is way off, the other bevel will wear into the roundedness of the opposite side, helping it to sharpen. But that process is destructive and far slower than simply finding the right honing stroke for each side