Thread: Pasted strop w/tape on spine?

I sure haven't heard anybody talk about this so I thought I would throw this out there.

I honed up a Shumate with piece of tape on the spine. Well, it passed all the tests wonderfully, but the shave test was less than admirable. I put the razor down for a few days to think about the situation. Today, I decided to put a new piece of tape on and go to the pasted strop. Before, I had removed the tape after 8k and gone to the pasted strop...this time I left it on. After the paste, I removed the tape, linen, Premium I. Whammo! Shave ready. It wasn't as good as Lynn's magic on my Dovo's, but it was still clean and comfortable during the entire shave. I suppose removing the tape didn't let the strop contact the bevel enough for that extra polish it needed.

Sooo...you sneaky devils have been holding out on me. Nobody ever mentions to keep the tape on all the way through the pasted strop. I'm up to three successful hone jobs at this point, woot!

I keep the tape on if it is my pasted balsa. But for my hanging strop with paste, i take the tape off.

Agreed it depends on the strop surface, if I were stropping on balsa yes I would leave the tape on... I have pretty much gone to using my two Leather Bench Strops exclusively after honing and I do remove tape on those...

Sorry to derail this, but I /still/ can't understand the whole "Taping the spine" thing... I understand that, in cases where you have a NOS razor, it can be done to prevent honewear but still get it shave-ready, and I understand it protects goldwash/spine detailing... But, outside of those, it seems, to my logic (that of an English/Psych major, so I barely made it through geometry ) that putting tape on the spine more than a few times for honing would be detrimental... It would change the spine/bevel ... ratio? I don't know the correct term there... It would change the natural system.

Can one of you honesters enlighten me as to why, outside of those two reasons, spine taping is used?

Ah, the old "tape or dont tape" debate..!

Heres some light reading..!

http://straightrazorpalace.com/advan...ed-taping.html

http://straightrazorpalace.com/advan...ne-ok-not.html

http://straightrazorpalace.com/advan...ape-spine.html

http://straightrazorpalace.com/honin...le-honing.html

http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...ne-taping.html

So as you can see, its been talked about a lot!

I personally do tape, it protects the spine (I think hone wear doesnt look good) and it lets me know that all the swarf I see on the hone has come from the edge. It also helps me get really small bevels.

From what I've read, some people do it and some dont. There are reasons for and against, and its really a personal choice as to whether you do or dont tape.

Originally Posted by ShavedZombie

Sorry to derail this, but I /still/ can't understand the whole "Taping the spine" thing... I understand that, in cases where you have a NOS razor, it can be done to prevent honewear but still get it shave-ready, and I understand it protects goldwash/spine detailing... But, outside of those, it seems, to my logic (that of an English/Psych major, so I barely made it through geometry ) that putting tape on the spine more than a few times for honing would be detrimental... It would change the spine/bevel ... ratio? I don't know the correct term there... It would change the natural system.

Can one of you honesters enlighten me as to why, outside of those two reasons, spine taping is used?

It was my great-gradfather's razor. It already had quite a bit of hone wear and a bevel sized chip that I wanted to remove without beating up the razor any further. It's only the second razor I've used tape on.

If a person, like Glen for example, is honing many razors belonging to other people taping the spine insures that it will look the same when the customer gets it back as when they sent it out. So if I was doing honing for hire I would probably tape the spine.

My first year honing I taped all of the spines because I was honing so many razors it would have been a chore to figure out which I taped and which I didn't if I taped some and not others. That wasn't the biggest reason though.

A new honer sees vintage razors with significant hone wear and assumes that if he doesn't tape the spine he will soon wear the honing flats on the spine of his pride and joy. I certainly feared that I would.

After I had honed over a hundred razors or so and had begun to feel some confidence in my developing ability It began to trouble me that Lynn only used tape in special situations. I felt uneasy about taping all of my spines as if I was "missing something" by not leaving the spine naked along with the edge so I began to experiment.

I took a NOS Solingen that I had picked up and measured the honing flats with a micrometer and honed the razor sans tape from setting the bevel to finishing. I used the Naniwas and Lynn's circle technique on the 1k and then pyramid on the 3/5 and followed with finishing on the 8 and 12k.

When I was done the razor was shave ready and I measured the honing flats again and they were the same. There was no measurable difference on that particular blade from the one honing session. I still hone many different razors as I have the RAD and they keep coming. I will eventually redo all of my first razors that were honed with tape sans tape.

So I have many to do and as result they will probably suffer very little wear from the honing. If I was only using a few in a rotation and was honing the same razors every so often over a period of years I suspect I would see some visible wear eventually. I am glad that I started with tape to learn the craft when I was developing the skills and may have used too much pressure and more strokes than necessary but now if it isn't a decorated spine or a Damascus blade I don't hone with tape.

If a person is skilled and isn't wearing the steel in contact with the hone from too much pressure and too many strokes I think it would take a lifetime to change the geometry if they always used tape ..... so tape or don't ...... if you know what you're doing I don't think it is an issue one way or the other. OTOH, I may be wrong, I was wrong twice before.

EDIT; Of course taking a chip out of an edge or a frown would be a different kettle of fish and so in a restore situation I would begin with tape and lose it ASAP.

Originally Posted by ShavedZombie

It would change the spine/bevel ... ratio? I don't know the correct term there... It would change the natural system.

Sure, but it's not like there's some one magic ratio. I've had razors from 7 degrees up to 25 degrees, and everything from about 16 degrees on up has shaved just fine. Even 25 degrees isn't the upper limit (that's what Feather uses btw) - one of the Gillette patents we've been discussing in the advanced honing forum claims that their machine leaves a 28 degree honing angle for the final step. So if you take a razor with a 16 degree honing angle and tape the spine which bumps it up to 16.8 degrees, it doesn't seem to matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

I have tried both taped and not taped spine on bench strop and so far do not see the difference. On hanging strop definitely no tape on the spine.