Help w/ Repairing Nick for Beginner

Hi Guys,

Been lurking for a while, and shaving with a straight now for only about a week. Been wet shaving with a DE for a long time, and usually post over at ShaveMyFace.

Anyway, somehow I managed to nick my blade already, and I'm thinking it may have happened while stropping by putting too much pressure on the blade while doing the X pattern (2.5" strop). Really don't know for sure when it happened, but nonetheless, it happened.

I've tried to put a pic of it below, the nick or chip is very close to the top of the blade. My question is can I repair this with only a 4000/8000 Norton, or do I need something a little more coarse? All I have is the 4000/8000, so if I need something else I may just consider sending it out and having it done professionally.

Thanks for your help.

Kenton

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6064/...2f4f8245_z.jpg

A 4000/8000 will work just fine, I've fix a few chips with mine. However if it's an option, it might be better to send it to someone who has sharpened and fixed a few blades in the past? There are several members here who might even be kind enough to do it for free :)

Good Luck

Not much of a nick but is it a high quality/priced razor ? I limited my early efforts to lower priced ebay or antique store acquisitions until I had some experience with honing. If you are going to try it I would suggest 1 layer of electrical tape on the spine and doing circles until the chip is 98% gone, then go to x strokes. If it is an expensive razor sending it out may be a better bet.

That's definitely honable! A 4k with slurry or a 1k will remove that easily.

Take Jimmy's advice and tape the spine before you start so you don't add on loads of hone wear removing the chip.

I'll just add that it is very unlikely that that chip came from stropping, whatever the technique. If the metal is defective near the edge or the edge was too thin, that's about the only way that stropping could have created it.

Thanks guys. With all your advice, I decided to give it a try and repaired the nick with circles on the 4000. Once the nick was repaired I tried my hand at honing, and below is the result. Obviously the true test will come in the morning when I shave.

Thanks again for all the input, and Ace, thanks for your post....I'm really not sure where it happened. I was guessing that maybe I could have been too aggressive on the canvas side of my strop and kind of drug it along the edge...but I'm purely guessing. Who knows, I could have been too long on my stroke and banged it against the metal part where the strop attaches.

Anyway, looks like I've fixed it, now to see if my hone job is satisfactory...

Kenton

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6064/...26904c42_z.jpg