Should have searched the forums first

I just finished honing my 6th razor and got a good shave out of it, decided when i was done i would get on and see if anyone has ever had similar problems.

This was and antique store kron punkt that needed alot of love. I have found it very relaxing to pull crap razors apart clean them up and put them back together (the next one i have to try making my own scales :rant:). Anyways i could not get this thing to take an edge no matter what i tried. The edge was flat (no frown, no smile) so I should have been able to use a relatively normal stroke and it would not take and edge. Then I would use various other strokes and still no edge.

This razor had zero hone wear on the it. not even a scratch on the spine. Why would it not take an edge? So I went back to basics. Taped up the spine (2 layers) did 10 laps and 220 and 20 on 1k. Boy all of a sudden it was sharp, removed the tape and went forward and lost the edge i had just put on it. Put the tape back on started over and went all the way through the process and 2 hours later completed a relatively good shave with it.

I started looking through here and found that alot of people always tape the spine when honing. This would explain the zero hone wear. So best i can figure is when i was working without the tape i was putting a new bevel on it while the old one was still there. I understand the concept of a double bevel but i am guessing they don't work very well in reverse.

Anyways if anyone thinks they know what the (insert choice word here) I was doing wrong, I would be happy to take the criticism.

By the way this is the first razor I have pinned back together and it was actually kind of satisfying, never done anything like that before.

A few different approaches to this...

Take a razor that you did not hone and you have no idea how it was honed...

1. Reset, your own bevel, using whatever and however you do that, then proceed from there... Some people even go so far as to lightly dull the existing edge on a glass or a fine hone to make sure then actually reset a bevel and don't get false positives on a sharpness test...

2. Magic marker test, to see where the old bevel is and chase it. By coloring the edge then doing a few laps you can more easily see what is going on... And try and match what the previous honer did and hope to god they knew what they were doing...

3. Nuke and pave, by taking it to a low grit stone you grind off the old bevel BUT you also most likely just over-honed that edge drastically so now it will take twice as long and way more steel to bring you edge back...

4. The exact opposite of 3. is the high grit "Hail Mary" try which is 5 laps or so on a barbers hone or 15 on a high grit finisher and hope to god the edge is there...

Hope that helps somewhat...and most of those are my stupid names for them

BTW the razor rocks those Kron-Punkt are really nice shavers...

Thanks for the input Glen, I guess so far I have been lucky. This is the first one I have had trouble with, but then again I have not honed very many yet.

Your right on the kron punkt, once I finally got and edge on it, it did shave quite well. A little more pull than I like so I might go back to the 12k for a few more laps (almost scared to at this point), considering the razor was garbage when I started I look at this as being all for fun.

+1 To what Glen just said. I always dull on glass with one stroke if I don't know anything about the edge or if it was old and I found it in a shop somewhere. It's much easier to start from scratch when honing something old.