Micrometers and Calculators

Greetings all. I'm relatively new to honing...at it about 6 months, long enough to experience great satisfaction and disappointment alike!

After a few successes, I found my nemesis: an ebay acquired Bengall that lured me with its lovely bone scales. The seller never mentioned the horrible condition of the blade and it was not evident in the photos posted. Beside some small chips in the edge, there was a length, about 4mm that was "dished" as though someone ground out a chip. I knew I'd be spending considerable time on the heavier grits, so I put a layer of tape on the spine. Hours later, and having worked through the standard progressions of 200, 1k, 4k, 8k, coticule, 16k etc in various combos....I couldnt get a decent shave. Long story short, I added a layer of tape and damn if I didnt achieve, in short order, a very good edge and shave.

Now, I work by eye and I tend to take the least sophisticated approach. I'm sure that some of you would have mic'd the spine, measured the blade width and determined how much tape to apply. Would that have helped me or do you find trial and error better? What would you honemeisters have done? Dont be bashful there are a lot of you.

Thanks, Jim

I do not get off the 1k stone until the razor can shave arm hair along the entire edge. It could be that you actually never had a set bevel before you added extra tape and increased the bevel angles.
Have you tried a stone lower than 1k for bevel setting ?

+1 with Stefan you were almost there, the extra layer concentrated your efforts to the edge and BAM !! the edge popped...

You could have done the same with just 1 layer or no layers but it needed more bevel work...
If you do not go above 1k until the entire edge pops, Toe - Heel no cheating, just like Stefan is saying, Honing gets much easier....

I would like to say that while it is possible to use a little trig and algebra to solve for the angles, like you asked about, I'm not real sure how effective it will be.

My math professor last quarter in analysis was found of telling us how he believes mathematics have no real world applications,,,lol...it is possible and in fact I enjoy thinking about the honing process in terms of how you could apply math to the process. So you could certainly use math to answer these questions but....

Having said this I think it is far more important to simply understand the geometry, trig, etc. that underly the process rather that trying to actually measure the quantities. The imprecision involved in any measurement is really going to be a problem in making calculations like how many degrees will the bevel change with one layer of tape vs. two layers? Using micrometers and the such will help, but how much? I mean is electrical tape perfectly consistent in terms of thickness? Is the spine exactly uniform in thickness and perfectly flat? The answers to these questions is probably not, but that's O.K. because they are close enough that this process works.

The entire honing process eventually comes down to what "feels" good enough for the person shaving. It would be nearly impossible to actually quantify this experience in numerical terms. Although you could just divide the spine by 2 and use tangent, sine, or cosine with the length of your blade to calculate the bevel angle; who says this angle is "correct or not" this may shave great for me but someone else may disagree. I think the fun in honing comes from finding the edge that suits me just the way I want it, to that extent I'm not to worried if end up at the same angle the blade was set to in the factory or by whomever honed it prior to me. I'd like to set it to where I think it feels best. After all its my razor.:)