Thoughts on bevel setting and sharpness tests for newbies...
I am going to preface this by saying that I still consider myself to be a relative newbie honer. I have been at it for about 8-9 months and have honed probably 100 razors or so. I have gone from beating my head against the wall in frustration to being able to put nice shaving edges on about 90% of the razors I try to hone with no trouble at all (the other 10% leave me beating my head against the wall still...)
I thought it might be useful to some of the guys that are just starting out at this if I shared a little bit about what I've learned.
First: If you can meet up with someone that is good at honing, DO IT!!! That alone would have probably saved me three months of headaches. I live about two hours from Randy T. and I never managed to find the time to meet with him, despite many gracious offers. I did talk to him on the phone once, and that hour long conversation helped me more than reading through everything in the wiki twice over.
One important thing that you'll get from facetime with a honer that will be difficult to learn on your own is a means to gauge how good your edge is at each step in the process.
That brings me to point two: ALL of the tests for sharpness must be calibrated to an INDIVIDUAL. What works for me to say that I'm done at the 1k level may or may not work for someone else. For me, a razor is done at the 1k when it shaves arm hair. I know to check it for that because water flows over the edge on my honing stroke. I don't have the sensitivity required in my thumbpad to determine when it's there by feel. Some people feel the edge, some people shave arm hair. Some people use the TNT. When all of those people do that, they know what they are looking for, for them personally. Your arm hair may or may not cut well at the 1k level. You may or may not be able to feel a good edge with TPT or TNT. But... YOU HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO TEST THAT WORKS FOR YOU!
That brings me back to spending time with someone that knows what they are doing. By feeling their edges at different points in the process you can begin to calibrate these tests to you. I had to do it the hard way; trial and error until I figured it out. There is no other way to calibrate the tests if you don't have edges to feel at various points in the process.
Hell, I even tried licking the edges to see if I could get useful information. I didn't get useful information, and they don't taste too good either.
Point three: PUT DOWN THE MICROSCOPE! Your microscope can tell you if you have micro-chips at the edge. It can also tell you if you have multiple bevels. It *might* tell you about scratch patterns, depth of scratches, and if your bevel is set. It can just as easily fool you about those things. Yes... YOUR MICROSCOPE CAN LIE TO YOU. I keep meaning to find time to put together a video of microscoped edges and how the light plays on them. By tilting a blade a fraction of a degree I can make 1k scratches look like 8k scratches. I can show you blades that look like they have a perfect bevel set, but that won't shave arm hair (and won't shave anything else if progressed through the grits). Feel free to pick up your microscope to check for chips, or as a curiosity about scratch patterns. The microscope should NOT be used to determine when it's time to move to the next stone in your progression. You need a calibrated test to determine that. No one can tell you what that test will be. You need to either meet with someone and learn a test that works for you (see point one), or beat your head against the wall until you get it.
