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Advice on a large smiling wedge....
Guys,
I recently traded for a few wedges, and one of them, a 6/8 W&B pure wedge (some hone wear, not bad and fairly even) with a curved spine and a smile. And as you can see in the pics, it has a slight lean toward the right side on the grind. Made it a challenge to find the right scales to put it in.
I took this razor to the DMT as it was very wavy on the edge and smoothed it out with a few 45 degree strokes. Not really a BK per se, but more an edge refinement prior to honing on it.
It has an exceedingly thick spine and has almost 0 grinding inclination, being very close if not a complete wedge. It is near the toe where the most spine wear exists, as would be expected. The smile on the edge is very slight and the curve to the spine is greater than the curve to the edge.
Most of the razors I have honed have been fairly square, spine and edge, so this is fairly new territory for me. The few smiles I have done had fairly square spines, or the spines and the smile matched fairly closely.
I have watched some of Glen's videos regarding smiles and had mastered the 'swoop' fairly well and managed to get some good edges on them.
Now to this wedge. Here a some pics, I've tried to show the spine wear and the bevel that I ended up with.
I will attach as many pics as it will let me, showing the spine, the wedge and the bevel that I have gotten:
Attachment 94326Attachment 94327Attachment 94328Attachment 94329Attachment 94330Attachment 94331Attachment 94332Attachment 94333
As you can see, she is a pretty thick wedge, thickest I ever tried.
Now the reason for this post..
First, the bevel is coming out very uneven. I used 3 layers of tape on her and started on the 1k. I wasn't getting hardly any results from the 1k since it had dulled it severely on the DMT, and went down to the 800 to try and establish a first bevel. What I got was hardly nothing at the toe and heel, note 'almost' there is a small bevel starting after doing many heel forward strokes and the 'swoop' stroke at the end. I've done a fair amount of circles, but that only seems to deepen the bevel in the center and does nothing for the toe and heel.
I've tried doing some rolling X's, as well as some finger pressure on the heel for a series of strokes, then on the toe for a series of strokes.
Now, should I continue to do what I'm doing? Is there a better way I've not learned yet?
Any advice on working this one out would be helpful, as I am open to any suggestions at this point. After working it on the DMT until the edge was smooth (remember, not a BK, but rather more of a honing stroke with the spine raised slightly until the edge resembled what I wanted it to look like) I have probably put at least 2 hours into it trying to get a bevel. I didn't want to subject it to any more of my punishment until I got some advice as to whether I should keep doing what I'm doing or take another path.
It pops hair in the center, but not so much at the heel and toe. It will remove some hair at both points, but not in a way that seems like a good bevel to me. Under Mag it doesn't look like what I would expect to see, as it kind of appears to have 3 bevels, one at the heel, one in the middle and one at the toe.
What say you, oh masters of the art????
Thanks!!
Mike