Thread: Solving a Mystery

Awhile ago, a member posted about a problem razor that wasn't giving satisfactory shaves, despite multiple honing efforts and passing all tests preliminary to the shave test. The particular brand, size, and grind of razor is one of my favorites, and I was curious about where the problem might be, so I asked the member to let me take a look at it.

The first thing I did with the razor was to attempt a shave with it. While it was able to shave, the results were unsatisfactory.


This morning I finally had a chance to give the razor a closer look and see if I could figure out what was going on. Normally with a razor like this I use my stereo microscope to determine which stone I need to start with. Here is what I saw when I looked at it with my microscope:


The picture doesn't capture things quite as well as actually looking through the microscope, but it does represent things well enough to show what I'm seeing.

After I took the picture, I thought it might be a fun learning experience for some of our beginners to see if they can figure out what's going on and what it will take to fix the problem, based on the picture and the clues in my post.

I'll give you all some time to ponder, and I'll post some more pictures as I continue honing it.

...to be continued...

At the risk of being (shudder) wrong ...... I am supposing an incomplete bevel set. If I am, as I think, seeing the very apex of the edge in the right side of the photo, it appears almost blunt. Also, though I am not familiar with assessing edges through photographs, or microscopes of that power, it appears the V is not consistent from the cutting edge to the top of the V.

Some microscope you have there Eric. Can you furnish details on the setup ?

W/O reading other responses it seems to me that the bevels are not converging to me evenly and it has some swiss cheese going on

Yes, it looks as if the bevel goes convex right near the cutting edge, and the hones have only been in contact with the 90% of the bevel surface towards the spine.

How to fix it? Not sure. I'd probably try to reset the bevel and take off enough metal so that there's no convexity left, but maybe it would be possible to set and sharpen a micro-bevel at the cutting edge by using 3 or 4 layers of tape? I've never tried this.

Pits in the bevel are never a good sign.

Yarrr! Devil's Spit!

I am with Jimmy on this one, I'd do more work on the bevel to see what the the steel looks like. Right now it looks like the bevel is not set at all.

not being an expert on such things, I have hone one or two of my own razors and when I see that type of image under magnification the only thing I think of is ''reset the darn bevel, ....quick!!'' without a decent bevel no amount of polishing will fix it unless you plan to spend 4 1/2 hours on the 8k side of your stone!!
just my tupense, don't mind me though, like I said, I ain't no expert!!

Sincerely, tinkersd

I have seen this before and to me it is bad temper of the steel.

Cannot help but think that edge was pasted and stropped to death.