I sharpened my second razor today. This was a Clauss that I picked up on Ebay this past week.
At first sight the razor looked to be in really good condition. No chips visible to the naked eye and looked pretty smooth. The scales had a burnt rubber smell to them. I disinfected the razor with some barbicide and gave it a quick polish with a buffing wheel and white paste. I also applied some Armor All and a day or so later the burnt tire smell has dissipated. The main reason I wanted this razor was that I wanted one with a rounded end and thicker than the others I had. This razor is about 13/16" across and my other razors are about 10/16" - that extra 3/16 looks a lot thicker.
Since the edge looked pretty good I decided to start honing with a 4k King stone. After giving it about 10 passes I checked it at 40x and found that I was creating a new shallow bevel. After continuing up to about 50 passes I realized that I was going to have to reset the bevel. I moved on to a 1K Norton and created a new bevel but never actually totally replaced the existing bevel - saw no need to remove that much metal. I worked my way back up to a 12k Chinese and created a nice sharp edge that led to a smooth shave.
My main question is have you guys found a bevel like this before? It was the opposite of what would be accomplished by putting tape on the spine of the blade. The only thing that I can think could have happened is that it was done on a strop with paste or maybe sharpened on some kind of "wheel".
Ed
