Honing Wedges. PITA

But i did it..

The wedge I put down because it was heading south fast a while back? I picked it up tonight along with the 2 other razors i first tried to hone and sorted the edges and bevels based on what i learned from my last honing "win".

So these were basically the first three razors i tried to hone, 2 of them were on my restoration diary i did a while back and the 3 of them ended up with wavy bevels..

Now having learnt the value of using variable pressure across the x stroke, i reset the bevels on the hollow ones, got it nice and straight and honed up from there. Now fair enough you can still see the old waves from the previous bevel, but the new bevel is consistent the length of the blade and matches the thinnest parts of what we ahall now call the Noob Bevel. That counts as doing a better job right? I guess i just wanted to see if i could.

The Wedge was a different matter.. one of the big lessons i've learned is reassess if it ain't going the way you want it to. in this case i had the marker on it and saw the bevel, based on the first few strokes was going to continue to be wavy. but try as I might, it was just too stiff to use variable pressure on. What i think happened was this.

My first attempt was without tape (didn't know taping a wedge was a good idea at the time) and because i used waaayyy to much pressure unevenly setting the bevel the first time, it led to uneven matching wear on the side of the spine. and this effect was still coming thru the tape and causing the wavy bevel. and i just wasn't anywhere near good enough to compensate thru feel

So what i did was this. little silvers of tape cut to size and placed on the side of the already taped spine on the areas corresponding to where the bevel was widest. then using a light light even pressure, i remarked the edge and went at it again.

result? new even (mostly) bevel that was a reasonably small width.

so what it adds up to is i now have an TPT, HHT, shave test passing wedge.

and as a secondary post within this one:

Now I Get It!

what the big deal about wedges is.. these things are incredible, the hair just falls away, i had an incredibly close smooth shave with it. It's awesome! the the weight of them really act in your favour and it's actually very responsive compared to what i thought it would be. This is going to be my "coming off the rig" razor, for that 3 week beard.

Cheers

Simon

Oil Rig?....Did it when I was a kid...Hardest job I ever had...Hat's off to ya'..Surprised you have enough fingers left to hold the razor:) I was Lead Tong...Don't know if they still call it that?

lol no, i do one of the posh oil rig jobs, although if the crew like me they let me play roughneck while making up our gear in the BHA. still manage to get plenty dirty and hit heavy stuff with other stuff

These days we get chain tongs, rig tongs and iron roughnecks. We don't do spinning the pipe in with a chain attached to the winch or tugger anymore though.

When you say lead tong, were you manning the tongs? they don't break the crew down like that here, whoevers standing nearest slings the pipe.