Thread: popping hairs at 325 - dull after 1k ???

I'm having trouble with a particular razor that I had to take a lot of metal off using a dmt 325
Oddly, it as popping hairs, and it seemed that I was starting to get an edge

I then took it to a 1k bevel setter, and now my edge is gone - how is it possible that I made the edge worse from there

really confused - hope someone might enlighten me

Are we looking at a wedge or a hollow ground beastie? Have you looked at the edge under magnification?

If you're working with a full hollow blade enough pressure could easily flex the blade so you're not honing the actual edge. I suspect you need to use less and less pressure as the grit gets finer.

Mick suspects correctly. You do need to use less pressure as you go up the grits, not that you use much in the first place.


Mick

Originally Posted by MickRussell

If you're working with a full hollow blade enough pressure could easily flex the blade so you're not honing the actual edge. I suspect you need to use less and less pressure as the grit gets finer.

I suspect this is part of the problem you are having, OP. However, if one were putting pressure on a blade, and getting arm hair to shave, that means the bevel was technically set. Then, upon going up to 1k, if no pressure were used, a microbevel would be formed; this would probably still shave arm hair.

OP: take a Sharpie or a magic marker and mark the length of the edge i.e. color the bevel on both sides. Then, using your normal stroke, gently do a couple laps on the 1k. You will be able to look at where the ink has been removed, and where it hasn't, to get an idea of what is going on. If you still have a thin black line at the very edge, you know your bevel is not yet set. If this is the case, continue on the 1k until it is!

Also, if using pressure, I like to do an extra 10 or so laps with very little pressure at the end of honing on each grit.

It's possible that you didn't yet have a proper bevel after 350, but did have a very rough edge which was able to cut arm hairs only because of its roughness. Then, as you completed 1K the roughness was gone and the lack of a good bevel was revealed by the results after that stage.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I took it back to the 325 - reset the bevel to the best of my ability and brought it back to the 1k w/ extra care
This time it went through the progression okay

On a separate topic, when on the 1k stone, i noticed that the toe was not cutting by the time the middle and heel were cutting well. What I did was just did some more passes just on the front of the blade. Is there a better way to go about evening up the blade?

If I have a razor that isn't honing well in one area I would first analyze what I have done so far. Some will go right into extra passes/change in pressure, whatever; I find that if that is done it could change the shape or geometry of the blade. Since you did some work on this blade, did you repair chips in that area, have to correct uneven wear or anything of that sort?
If it is none of the above you may get away with a few extra passes/extra pressure in that area, then follow with some full passes to even out the bevel.
I try to avoid any of that, but have done it on occasion and by pressure I mean little to none.

esse when you sharpen a blade with a coarse stone it leaves tiny grooves in the edge the width of the stones grit,because of the shape of the grit is roughly spherical the edges of the grooves are sharp and when the hair is caught by the groove it cuts on this edge(think microscopic saw blade) when you progress to a finer stone it's grit is closer together so it squashes the ridges between the grooves but with more strokes it creates it's own grooves,this process continues as you go to finer and finer grits,sand paper shows the progression of grooves really well and cutting certain things with a knife sharpened on a really low grit you can feel it grab,it's just how sharpening works

Originally Posted by esse

On a separate topic, when on the 1k stone, i noticed that the toe was not cutting by the time the middle and heel were cutting well. What I did was just did some more passes just on the front of the blade. Is there a better way to go about evening up the blade?

This is the nice thing about marking the blade with a marker. It helps to figure out which stroke to use. If I saw that after a couple passes the toe wasn't hitting, I would decide to do a 45 degree sweeping x-stroke, which focuses a little more attention on the heel and toe. Doing this from the beginning, usually I can get an even bevel. The other thing might be spine wear. Since the amount of spine wear(thickness of spine) relates to the width of the bevel, less spinewear at the toe can lead to a thinner bevel.

This is all ideal of course. Sometimes I will end up with an uneven bevel out of pure bad luck. At that point I do what you did, and just focus on whatever part of the blade is not working.

Relating to the spine wear - if it's already there on a vintage blade, is there any good way of addressing the source of the problem. Also, I've chosen to use a layer of electrical tape. I was kind of hoping that spine wear didn't translate through tape, but it seems like that is still the case