Thread: Now why did this work???

It's a bit hard to tell from the photos, but it appears that there is quite a bit of hone wear on the spine. Did you try the Marker test to see if you were removing steel from the edge of the blade? I suspect that what was happening is that you were removing steel from behind the edge of the blade and that the actual edge wasn't making good contact. With the uneven spine wear, it is also likely that the bevel was quite uneven and that in itself adds a completely different challenge. Adding the tape raises the angle ever so slightly and this may have given you more consistent contact with the edge and helps resolve some of the uneven bevel issues as well. I've also found that tape on badly worn spines provides more consistent results, YMMV.

I did use the sharpie test. I could get even wear on the bevel if I adjusted my stroke a bit.
The hone wear is mostly from me. The edge was originally pretty bad and uneven, so I decided in all my infinite wisdom that I
should breadknife it and start anew. Terrible idea!

I was never able to get the bevel right, and I probably did WAY more damage to the razor than I needed to.

Regardless, I think your probably right about the angle and the tape. Whatever it was, I shaved 1/2 my face with it again today WTG and XTG with no scales (Challenging!!) and it shaved very nicely.

I'm going to build a functional set of oak or aluminum scales for it this weekend and it's now going to be my travel razor.