Hello from Manchester UK And the restoration of a straight razor.
Someone gave me his father’s Handsworth razor many years ago and not understanding thestructure of the razor I decided I would strop it Iall I achieved was to completely round off the beveland render it useless..
I made several attempts to strop it over the years and the edge was absolutely useless.. By thelooks of the bevels I did not connect properly with the spine . I think I tried to sharpen it with acarpenters oilstone which was not flat.I started sharpening knives using a guided rod system andtried to sharpen the razor once againI failed. The next attempt was the dawn of my freehandsharpening using a mousepad and various grits of paper the finest been 3000 there was a slightimprovement it now sported a rather chipped bevel. Last year I tried again having watched a videoon You Tube of someone sharpening a razor there was a slight improvement but still poor.
I have now been freehand sharpening for about a year and a half now and iI try to sharpensomething everyday I have recently found the control to do V bevels and I have built up experiencewith both European knoives & Japanese knives so yesterday I pulled the razor out & decided itwas time to fix it once & for all.The bevels were not even for starters & there was a slight curve inthe blade so having read the article on restoring a razor .
First course of action was the bread knife manoeuvre using a Nubutama 150 to remove the bevel& the slight frown. In retrospect I need to to move up what I would call the bolster which will makefuture works more easy. Once flattened I started to work on a new bevel I decided that I would notwork the bevel to the apex with the Nubatama since I decided that there would be a real danger ofputting micro chips into the bevel. The next stone was a Naniwa Chosera 600 grit which I workedalmost to the apex . The next was a Shapton Glass 1k which I cut through to the apex but thebevels were not that even so I worked as necessary until the bevels were more or less even ( Iconclude that at some time I must have made the spine uneven anyhow with a bit of work I madethe bevels even. I then worked up through Shapton Glass 4k -8k then Naiwa 10k finishing with a16k Shapton Glass and the I put some 0.25 micron CBN spray on the 16K Shapton for the lasthoning .
I then gently stropped with red rouge on a leather tensioned strop and finally stropped it on balsa.So the end result although not perfect since I still have some scratches left over from theNubatama on the mid to top part of the bevel I should have spent more time with the 600 & the 1Kto remove all the scratches.
The razor will shave now although my facial hair is not strong so I favour an electric razor but it isnow fairly close to how it should be.
I will raise the bolster as is done on a European Chef knives and round off & polish the bottom ofthe bevel. I will go back to 1k stone and work until the scratches are gone.
I intend to get some diamond films at some stage so that I can improve the finish and also work ongetting more out of ceramic knives.
I will post some picture both of how it is now and the finished razor with a close up of the bevelusing my USB microscope.
I now feel in control of straight razors and feel it will be as it should be soon thanks to some hintsfrom the forum.
As said I found the articles most helpful and I am happy that I am on my way to mastering anothersharpening discipline.
