Thread: Honing help please

First off, let me say hello and thank you. This is my first post, but I have been reading these forums for about a month now and they have been very helpful.

Now for my honing problems.

I purchased a dovo 5/8 razor from Tony Miller. The razor was excellent, it was prehoned to shaving sharpness and I was very happy with the transaction and friendly customer service. I used the razor for about a week or two when my dilemma arose. While rinsing shaving cream off the blade, I inadvertently bumped it into the sink faucet and put a couple nicks/dents in the blade. Rather than send the razor off for repair, I've attempted to fix the problem myself. First, I did not own any norton stones but I did have a Spyderco Sharpmaker. I used the stones on the sharpmaker (laying them flat, not in the typical V position) and used these stones to remove the nicks in the blade. After doing this, the razor was nowhere near sharp enough, so I decided it was time to upgrade stones. I purchased a Norton 4000/8000 and have been attempting to correct my poorly honed razor ever since.

I've tried the pyramid method, I've tried just shaving perpendicular to the stone and I've tried using the X-pattern. Nothing seems to make my razor sharp enough. I therefore went to radioshack today and purcahsed the 10 dollar 60-100x microscope, hoping that this could solve my problem. Well, the razor still doesn't pass the hanging hair test nor seem sharp enough for shaving.

My main quesiton - when looking at the razor through a microscope, I know that the bevel should be uniform in size and color. In order to see this, should I tilt the blade so that it's perpendicular to the flat surface I use to look at it through the microscope with, or do I just lean the razor against the tabletop and use the microscope this way? I ask, because if I leave it leaning on the tabletop, it seems to have two colors (the darker color closest to the edge). If I tilt it, then it looks like I've removed the shadow and everything is uniform in color.

Other things I do when I sharpen: I do my best to keep the razor blade flat on the stones. I go very slowly. I always move the blade perpendicular to the stone, but have tried both the x-patter and just sharpening straight across.

Is there anything I'm missing? Sorry for the long post, but any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

As much as I'd like to be able to give you an answer I'm afraid what your asking for is the knowledge of honing. I can't really provide it in a post. Most everyone else is in the chat tonight. I suggest you call me or we go into chat tomorrow (Monday) evening and talk about it either directly or over the chat system, whichever you feel more comfortable with. I'll PM you my home phone number and we can talk or you can reply with yours and I'll pay for the long distance service.

Bottom line though is that you probably need a lot of info to fix the blade yourself.

But if your kinda reclusive and don't reply...and thats ok, I suspect that your blade bevel is ok but that you don't really have the hang of honing yet. Did you use pressure while honing on either stone or have your fingers touching the blade?