Thread: Sandpaper

Hi,

At the moment i don't have a bevel setter, like a 1000k, but I got my fingers crossed that my wife is getting me one for Christmas. So i can't chance going and getting one. But on the other hand my shaves..well haven't been great. I knew i needed to reset the bevel so i turned to sandpaper, started at 600grit, then 1000, then 2000 grit sandpaper. It's cheap, but effective? Amazingly enough, off of the 1000grit sandpaper my old razor was picking off hanging hairs along the entire length. I had the paper nice and tight because i knew sandpaper would create a rounded bevel. From the 2000k paper i can go on with hones. But i must admit I like the results considering it was a 4$ job. Has anyone else ever done this?

No I haven't, mainly because I do have a 1K. One caution would be that the edge coming off the sandpaper would be a bit rough, as it should be. The problem is that when you test with the HHT, it might be the jagged nature of the edge instead of its sharpness that is cutting the hairs. You won't know if that is the case until you move through the honing progression. Many times an edge that will cut hanging hairs at 1K won't cut them when it is smoothed by the 4K.

Ok i didn't see that with my 10x magnifying glass, but i can see what you mean, getting jagged edge from the sandpaper. It is a very harsh edge, but keen. Although it's not the best edge it still did the job of setting my bevel, I'm going to go to a bbw with slurry to fix it up before moving on.

I didn't mean to say that you had done anything wrong. I just wanted to point out that a 1K edge will sometimes pass the HHT because of the roughness of the edge. As you go through your progression, you may find that, as you progress, the edge fails the HHT. That is still not a problem as long as it starts to pass it once again later in the process.

I have been using sandpaper to rip off old oxidized steel, remove nicks & frowns and start the bevel for about 7 years.
It works just fine.
In fact I just had a new guy over this evening and we worked on 2 of his razors and removed the frowns using 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper. It took about 5 minutes per razor. The sandpaper works so well because it has a high number of abrasive grains per square inch. More than most hones.
When you use it then you should follow it up with a regular hone of approx the same grit to "smooth out"
the bevel and edge. The sandpaper is very aggressive and leaves a comparitively coarse bevel & edge.

A lot of guys here use sandpaper, you have a lot of company.

My 600wetdry degraded after a while, kinda making refining before i moved on. But i did have cheap 600 grit paper. I certainly agree the edge was quite rough after, my lowest hone it a bbw with slurry so i worked on it a while to get it back into shape. may i ask "randydance" what do you do to keep the sandpaper from rounding the bevel? i had the paper very tight but when i moved on to the hone i could see the roundness and honestly i added a layer of tape so i could work on the edge...

I occasionally use 3M wet/dry 2000 grit sandpaper as a step between my 1000 grit bevel setter and a 6000 grit stone. I get this at an auto parts store. The bevel is competely set already. I do this when I am not happy with the edge off my 1000 grit bevel setter, which I want to shave, although harshly. The edge from 2000 grit sandpaper feels like the equivalent of a Norton 4000 grit edge to me, and will shave. To prevent rounding of the bevel, which is a real concern, I use a solid glass block to set the piece of sandpaper on, and I spray the glass block with water first, and again spray the sandpaper several times during honing honing to rinse off swarf and grit from the sandpaper. The sandpaper sticks pretty well to the glass and is of course completely flat. Don't be afraid to use moderate pressure on the blade while honing on the sandpaper. It produces a pretty amazing edge in a much shorter time than it would take with the Norton 4000 grit stone. I examine it under 30X magnification to make sure it is evenly sharp and polished, then go to the coticule. Sometimes I finish with an Escher after the coticule. Just my experience and opinions, your mileage may vary. I only use a piece of 2000 grit sandpaper for one razor, it does not work nearly as well on a second razor due to losing lots of abrasive compound during the honing. I do not use sandpaper at all if I am happy with the appearance and edge from the 1000 grit bevel setter, so I don't use it very often any more. Just another tool in the bag for me.

Originally Posted by 111Nathaniel

may i ask "randydance" what do you do to keep the sandpaper from rounding the bevel? i had the paper very tight but when i moved on to the hone i could see the roundness and honestly i added a layer of tape so i could work on the edge...

Since the sandpaper has 4 layers, paper-glue-abrasive-glue and thus has some "give" to it, there is no way to avoid rounding the bevel.
You simply have to spend some time on the next hone to "flatten out" the bevel. That's the trade-off, your time versus money for an expensive hone.

Something you can't avoid then... Croaker when i used the 2000k also from the autobody repair, i let the swaft build up on the paper, kinda like letting the hone clog up with swaft to lessen the "abrasiveness" that way to lessen the gap between the 2000k and my hone. I don't know if that was truly what happened but the theory seemed good. Do you thinking adding a tape layer after the paper was a good idea? It created a secondary bevel on a rounded edge would that defeat the purpose you think? I'm shave testing this razor later so i'll find out how it went anyway.

Leaving the swarf on was not a good idea, it actually rounded the bevel even more, btw.....I limit the number of laps on a piece of sandpaper to 50-60 then I change it out.
The tape is not a problem except now you will have to use tape on that razor every time you hone it ( but not for stropping). The problem will become remembering which razors require tape and which do not.
My policy is to tape every razor ( I hate the sight of hone wear) for all honing.
Another option is to use tape when on the 500, 1000, 2000 grit level but the removing the tape for the 4000 grit and finer. That does require more time on the 4K to generate the proper bevel angle but the hone wear is significantly reduced.