Thread: Odd Flattening on Spine

Originally Posted by livingontheedge

but how skilled are you at stroping?

i did try to shave with it first, then made an attempt to strop. It did get better after i stropped it, but still pulled.

Advices is very impressive. But it looks like you would have quite a bit of work ahead of you. Before I started I'd give the seller a call or email to see what he recommends. May be a problem he's familiar with and may just send you another.

Hi ThreeSGuy,

I have a different Dovo with that same 6/8 shoulderless blade, and love it. I do hone it with the heel forward, but have never looked that closely at the hone wear. Until just now, and I see that the hone wear line is a tiny bit narrower where you indicate no hone wear on your own. With my own blades, I do a bevel set without tape to be sure that the spine and edge do settle into one another properly. I then continue the honing without tape so that the edge and spine get the same degree of polish. After that, maybe I'll use tape in the future.

A professional honer might not pay this much attention to making the edge user-friendly for future nonprofessional honers, and instead apply strokes or other tricks that you learn over thousands of blades. I have a Dovo that was honed by one of the pros, and it came to me with a wonderful edge. However, it did not come ready for an amateur to maintain it. There's a very slight warp in the blade, and I've yet to get the bevel and edge to match up really nicely. I've gotten better at honing, and can tweak my strokes to follow the blade's peculiar curve, but don't want to work that hard at it and don't find that it lends the blade any charming character. It just makes it a pain to hone.

So some possible histories of your blade are that a) it shouldn't really have passed initial quality control and been sent back for a better factory bevel set, b) the pro honer in Michigan used some advanced techniques to coax a good edge from it, c and beyond) OK, I don't know enough to speculate any further.

But I think the correction will be a tapeless bevel set, maybe at the expense of some gold wash. I don't remember where the gold is on those blades. My model is just plain steel with the notches across the spine. Anyway, that's the aggressive approach I'd take. But I'm not a pro.

Good luck. I hope the actual solution is a happy one for you.

Originally Posted by roughkype

I see that the hone wear line is a tiny bit narrower where you indicate no hone wear on your own.

It is a defined shoulder between the wear and no-wear spots. it wouldnt be a problem if i could get it to sit flat on the stone. the no-wear spot creates a three point contact between the blade and the stone, instead of sitting flush.

Originally Posted by roughkype

Good luck. I hope the actual solution is a happy one for you.

thank you

Here is the picture of my blade. The opposite side has more wear on less length of the blade, but my camera wouldn't focus on the side that does not have the bismarck logo (go figure). The picture doesn't show that much wear, but as it did not shave right out of the box, and will not sit flat on the hone, 'I' think there is something wrong. Also as this is my first true straight, I am unfamiliar with what it is supposed to be like.

Three-point contact is wrong. Rather than throwing good money after bad, you should exchange it.

It's a really quick change from hone wear to no hone wear, you'd think if it was done with normal honing the change would be more gradual. Not so abrupt ending to the wear. Very nice razor however.

Nathaniel.

WOW. the guy at customer service told me that the flat spot on my razor was from the way dovo manufactures their razors.... he said the sharpening service they use tapes ALL the razors they hone. First off, i doubt the spine flattening would be from the manufacturer, second, why is it different on both sides, third, there should be a memo letting the customer know that the honing service uses tape when they hone. not happy at all now... I sent them an email with the picture of my razor, they will contact me back.

I hope that the person looking at your picture understands what he sees. If the spine flattening was along the full length, it'd be OK, but it isn't, and you're getting three-point contact on a flat surface. You should have two-line contact, the spine and the edge, from a properly honed blade. Many folks at AOS won't know that. I've been in a couple of their stores and the staff were cute women who didn't know anything about the straights. Not that cute women are dumb or untrainable, but I suspect they were hired primarily to get guys to walk in from the mall. AOS has some nice creams and lots of great handles for disposable blades, and I think that's their focus.

Be patient with whomever you're dealing with, noncombative, so they'll want to help you instead of want to blow you off. They're a big enough gig that they don't have to care so much about reputation. They don't need to know you'll never do business with them again until you've got what you want from this transaction. And even then they don't need to know.

I suspect that any service honing brand-new blades, especially ones with some spine decoration, will tape them. I would by default, unless the owner specifically said not to. I'd volunteer to fix this one up for you, but know enough to know I'm not smart enough yet to make it better. I'd trust Glen or Lynn with it. Maybe in ten more years I'd trust myself with it.

Good luck for a good outcome. I'm reading along with interest.

In my humble opinion, it looks to me like it was honed on a mechanical flat wheel with the heel forward (or leading)...this allowed only the portion of the spine seen with wear to contact the wheel, but the entire length of the edge could have been honed this way.

I am fairly new to honing razors, but I seem to recall an old video of Dovo production that showed exactly what I am describing (except for the lack of spine contact toward the tang).