Thread: Trouble with toe

In an attempt to keep myself from throwing a wedge through the window I have called it quits for the night... I have a Wester Bro's Yankee Wedge that I have been working on getting honed up. I had tried honing it previously to no avail a while back and decided to give it another go tonight. I checked the bevel with a sharpie to make sure I was using the right thickness of tape, and worked on setting the bevel on a Norton 1k, then moved up to start my 4k/8k pyramid at 25/25 strokes using the X-stroke.

The issue I am having is that I cannot get the toe to sharpen for the life of me. Up until about 0.5" from the tip the blade is wonderfully sharp, popping hairs off my arm quite smoothly. However that last half inch of the blade will not do anything. The bevel appears to be consistently wide from heel to toe. The toe does start to smile a little bit so I tried the whole thing with the 45 degree x stroke, but can't make anything of it.

Does anybody have any advice on how to proceed?

I may be tempted to try a rolling x stroke, or a minute amount of pressure on the toe. Do most of your stroke, and then on the last little bit of the stone use some gentle pressure on the toe.

I've only sharpened a couple of wedges, and they took me a long time and lots of patience to bring to shave ready. Hopefully some others with lots of wedge experience will chime in. I'm interested to know as well.

Use magic marker, and see which stroke will provide best contact between stone and the toe of the razor.

I'm looking at your post count and it concernes me. I say this because true wedges are really a total PITA to hone. What I might recommend is that you oil that one up and stay with the hollow's until you get the honing thing truely down. Now, I know that post count and time with SRP doesn't always mean that you are new to honing, so:

The edge should pop hairs at 1K along the entire edge before you move up on the stones...period. You didn't mention how many layers of tape you are using...my maximum is 3 & I really don't like to go over 2 to be honest.

Sounds like the rolling x may be your answer, but you won't know until you try it with the marker. You will more than likely have to try several "methods & angles" before you find what works for the razor. The marker will show this. Post a pic of the razor if you would & it may give us a chance to offer better advice as well.

I didn't have much trouble with the near-wedge W&B I honed a little while back, but it may have been easier to hone steel. Anyway, looking back at what I did last night I think I totally disregarded what I saw when I did the marker check. I have a feeling that I tried different strokes until the marker disappeared, and then obliviously returned to the x-stroke. I definitely will leave these potentially PITA razors to the nights when I only want to do one honing. I had tried to tackle 3 razors last night and this was the last one... oops. I like to use a layer of tape on all my razors to protect the spine; I usually use 1 layer of 7 mil electrical tape, and thought that 1 layer of 8.5 mil tape would be enough for the wedge. Maybe I'll try 2 layers of 7 mil.

I just finished honing a "Barbers' Use" wedge, and it did take some time. It has some micro-chipping in the blade which may have been a result of "Devil's Spit", but I resisted the attraction of going to IK, put on three layers of tape, and set the bevel on 4K and went up through my normal progression. I noticed that because of the natural smile of the blade, I had to be versatile about maneuvering the razor on the stone, using a slight rolling X stroke as I neared the toe. I like to shave with wedges, and I don't consider them a pain to hone. However, they are clearly more complicated to hone than a straight shaped blade.

Last night I gave honing this wedge another shot. I think the thing that was messing with me was that the toe sloped off from it's previous owner putting too much pressure on the toe when honing. I ended up using a sort of 45 degree rolling stroke to get the toe to take an edge. I was fresh out of facial hair this morning, so tomorrow I will see if it can shave. Thanks for the help everybody.