Thread: Razor Over Stropped? Blade Valley

I recently picked up an old Cadman from an antique dealer. I noticed that the centre of the blade has a slight dip (1-1.5mm), to me it looks like it was always stropped in the middle, stropped the middle out of it basically. What's the best way to quickly hone this out to straight or a slight "smile"? Should I hone it right on the edge on a flat surface and completely remove the bevel first ?!! I have a 4/8K wet stone and I have a courser oil stone I use in the kitchen for knives which is narrower. Is there any problem using oil stones? Should I tape the spine so I don't wear through the spine? Any advice to a newbie would be appreciated. ~m

Most of us "re-shape" a blade with the spine off the stone, like a pocket knife. You are literally grinding away the steel...just don't use a grinder! The kitched stone you are speaking of or any other coarse sharpening stone would be good. Be careful on the coarse stones as not to take too much material off. I use a shapton 220 & diamond stones for shaping with quite a bit of pressure, then I go to finer stones to finish. You can use water stones, oil stones, or dry stones on razors with no ill effect with shaping. Take your time and you will have that razor back where you want it it in no time. It will take longer to re-hone that razor as you will have to completely re-set the bevel...but once you do you will be more than pleased with yourself on saving an old razor.

Welcome to SRP. Sounds like the blade has what is known as a frown due to improper honing. Taking it across the hone as if you were slicing a piece of the rock is known as "breadknifing" and is the nuclear option. It will create way more work to get the bevel back IME.

I would begin with the spine slightly lifted off of the hone and do circles and X strokes counting an even number of them on each side. When I got there or pretty close I'd use one layer of tape and begin laying the spine on the hone as in normal honing. Keep an eye on the tape and replace if you wear it perceptibly.

Check out this PDF of a 1961 barber manual on honing and stropping from the SRP Wiki here. This will show you the blade profile you should shoot for and give tips on how to get it and keep it. Your razor is not the best option for beginning honing but it is already messed up and will be good practice. Hope it works out well for you.

Thank you. So I can put blade to stone "perpendicularly" by hand? A slight angle? Does anyone use a jig for this? So, at that point should I just eyeball (sorry for ever using the word "eyeball" in a post here at SRP ) the smile, I'm guessing a visible and slight curve is all I want. This is going to take all day I bet but I kind of like the time I've spent honing so far though. Almost a meditation.... Thanks again. ~m

OK good advice here too. Breadknifing, great term for it. X's and O's. I was thinking I wanted to get it back to flat first then take a little off near the ends. I read that old barber manual a couple of weeks ago and maybe I'll review it again. What kind of tape works best when taping?
~m

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Welcome to SRP. Sounds like the blade has what is known as a frown due to improper honing. Taking it across the hone as if you were slicing a piece of the rock is known as "breadknifing" and is the nuclear option. It will create way more work to get the bevel back IME.

I would begin with the spine slightly lifted off of the hone and do circles and X strokes counting an even number of them on each side. When I got there or pretty close I'd use one layer of tape and begin laying the spine on the hone as in normal honing. Keep an eye on the tape and replace if you wear it perceptibly.

Check out this PDF of a 1961 barber manual on honing and stropping from the SRP Wiki here. This will show you the blade profile you should shoot for and give tips on how to get it and keep it. Your razor is not the best option for beginning honing but it is already messed up and will be good practice. Hope it works out well for you.

~m,

You are going to have to get rid of steel to undo the frown and straighten the edge. "Breadknifing" is one approach; lifting the spine off the hone and doing the "pocket knife" motion is another. Yet another is applying electricians' tape to the spine and honing away with the edge and taped spine on the hone. The tape will abrade in this process so you will need to refresh the tape. Whichever method you use is going to require lots of forth and backs and much patience.

good luck

I like 3M electrical tape. It is consistent in thickness and made in MN in the USA. Helps stimulate our economy. You asked about a jig, under normal circumstances the spine on the hone gives the proper angle. Since you are removing a considerable amount of metal from the edge to restore the bevel to a proper profile, the freehand honing with the spine slightly lifted, accomplishes that. If you're not comfortable with the spine lifted some guys do it with 3 pieces of tape to start and remove it to one or none when the profile is corrected.

Originally Posted by mkochsch

Thank you. So I can put blade to stone "perpendicularly" by hand? A slight angle?

Definitely NOT perpendicular--this is why the term "breadknifing" is so deceptive and destructive. As someone has already described, hold the blade with the spine slightly off of the hone, so at a slight angle higher than normal honing. This will remove the steel you want removed and retain the steel you want to keep.

I have just finished reprofiling my first frowning blade. I read the wiki and decided on the breadknifing approach which was simple enough but I was amazed at how long it then took to reset the bevel using a combination of the DMT 325 and the chocera 1k.

Part of the problem (I think) is that as part of getting the frown in the first place the middle section of the spine was quite a lot flatter than the toe or heel sections but now that the edge was straight there was not a consistent correspondence between the spine and the edge when the razor was flat on the hone. I would love to know what the experts do with this. After a few hours I simply decided to use two layers of tape to get to the edge more effectively and this finally did the trick.

Claude

Originally Posted by Utopian

Definitely NOT perpendicular--this is why the term "breadknifing" is so deceptive and destructive.

I would suggest the wiki is changed. As per my previous message I read this to clearly mean perpendicular, which is what I did (unfortunatley).

Claude