In most cases cracks propagate no matter how much you try to avoid it. If you managed to hone past the crack it's almost all luck and almost no honing technique.

As far as changing the bevel angle 1/16" is insignificant on 99.9% of the razors, and for the ones that matters the issue is with the original razor design. Cf. basic trigonometry plus that statistics thread we made a year or so ago (for those who don't have the experience do draw it from).