Wade & Butcher 5/8" Wedge

Just bought a beatup W&B 5/8" (I think) Wedge off ebay to begin working on my honing skills. I just wanted to check and see if it's wise to use one layer of electrical tape along the spine or more or none when I begin trying to put a bevel on it. It seems like with the physical shape of the wedge, maybe I shouldn't use electrical tape at all, but I'm certainly no honemeister and not even a physicist (to say the least). I know the wiki says to use electrical tape, but I just wanted to see if the "rules" were different for wedges. Any advice would be beneficial and thanks in advance.

As far as I am concerned, taping is personal preference. It may speed up the honing process on an ebay wedge, but I still prefer not to use it.

By the way, if you are just learning to hone, I would say this is a less than ideal way. Granted, I can't see the razor, but wedges generally take a while to set the bevel, and setting bevels is the hardest part of honing to learn. Just my .02

Sorry to pseudo-derail the topic, but, Dylan, could you expand on how Bevel setting is the hardest to learn? I watched Lynn do it on sunday (on a completely bevelless blade, it was fresh from the buffers, so the entire edge was blank, uniform. There wasn't even a change in edge to indicate a bevel) and it just looked like a little more pressure, and a lot more circles than his normal honing... It didn't look too challengin.

I say this from the perspective of someone who knows next to nothing about honing. Could you please share your insight with me?

Gracias.

EDIT: I understand why It would be harder on wedges since theres constant, full length contact.

However, I don't understand why it would be harder witha hollow

On a new blade or one that's previously in decent shape, yes, setting the bevel can be easy. But most of the ebay razors require a fair amount of work and have uneven hone wear. On wedges, this tends to be worse because there is more metal there, so uneven-ness may appear minimal to the eye; the same about of visual uneven-ness takes longer to correct on a heavy grind than a full hollow. So more time on low grit hones. This also leaves more time for mistakes to be made, especially uneven strokes and/or pressure. Pretty much, everything that can be wrong with the blade or can go wrong while honing gets amplified because there is more steel/more time on hones.

An least that's how I see it...

Ah, I forgot to take vintages into account. That would make sense.. If something's wrong with it, you aren't just grinding that out and going... You have to make it all uniform.

I see, Thanks again!

Cheers,
Jeremy

Thanks for the advice on taping. You were certainly right that that was a hard razor to learn on. But it was fun and it's in better shape than it was earlier. I think I might work on some other blades before I come back to that one.

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Originally Posted by gmonster

Thanks for the advice on taping. You were certainly right that that was a hard razor to learn on. But it was fun and it's in better shape than it was earlier. I think I might work on some other blades before I come back to that one.

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good idea. try to learn on hallow ground dead blade. then you can try wedges smile face etc