Thread: Art of Shaving - cheapest place for "singing" TIs?

A couple of other questions:

Is it really a full hollow "singing" grind?

Is the "Art Of Shaving" on the blade painted on, or is it etched into the metal?

Have you finished honing it up yet?

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Is it really a full hollow "singing" grind?

It's a full hollow grind, but the thin part is thicker than most vintage Solingen full hollows, so (while I don't have one to compare) I'm guessing it's thicker than the older singing TIs.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Is the "Art Of Shaving" on the blade painted on, or is it etched into the metal?

Ha, ha, great minds think alike! I was glad to see that it's painted on.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Have you finished honing it up yet?

No, I haven't been able to spend much time with it. I don't have fun honing on DMTs, so I switched to a Norton 4K for a couple hundred laps. I'd hoped that would be enough, but I made no progress on the last little bit of the double bevel, so I gave up, resigned to return to the DMT. With all this work, it'd better be a damn good shaver!

Incidentally, I sort of alluded to this above, but this brand new razor arrived with what I consider a fair amount of hone wear. It was about the same as the pre-production Silverwing below (with credit to ignatz). In others' experience, is this typical of TI razors?

My TI supergnome 6/8 came from classic shaving with absolutely no hone wear. Of course, Lynn fixed that issue pretty quickly after I sent it to him!

That seems unusual to me, but again, I only have the one so maybe some dedicated french blade fans will chime in...

-Rob

I DIDN'T see this link early but person send me this link which had exact razor with stainly steel handly.i did hone that raZor and had similar problems.Problem was after working quite some time i find out someone sharpened this razor by using tape .Now i have to go lower grit stone and make a new bevel tip of the blade was very dull .i did work on it again and put a new bevel and saw blade back is getting hone wear.My problem was i wanted help the owner and didn't wanted to put a lot marks on back of the blade.i think i did make that blade shave ready condition except the tip of the blade.what i can say is the steel is very hard stieel but if you get shave ready condition that edge should last a lot longer then regular razor i mean at least 6 months longer.please let us know where you will end up.

Dagnabbit, I just found out there is an AOS store a couple stops away on the subway from here.

I may have to go check out one of these bad boys in person. That'll mean also picking up some new shave soap too....

Any update, Steve?

Sorry, gents, for not updating this thread . . .

I spent more than another hour on my 1200DMT and got absolutely nowhere . . . no visible increase in hone wear and no improvement in the double bevel in the portion of the blade where it's affected. The marker test showed I was making good hone contact along the full length of the blade. I was beginning to wonder if my DMT was wearing out, so I gave up on the TI and decided to try to set bevels on two dull-as-butter-knives ebay specials (a Kron-Punkt and a Waterville). I had both feeling sticky and popping arm hairs in just a few minutes on the DMT, so the DMT is just fine.

I concluded two things:

1. This razor is made of hard steel. It is much harder than any of my other razors.
2. I'm going to send this one back and get another, hopefully, with a fairly well-set factory bevel. I expect the new razor Friday and aim to get it shaving this coming weekend.

Good news/bad news perhaps?

Nice to have hard steel. PITA to have hard steel....

I bought one a couple of weeks back, too and have also been experiencing honing issues. When I first bought it, it was *just* about sharp enough to shave with, so I gleefully set about honing it the next day. Mine came with a very big smile, and the bevel in the middle of the smile was enormous - almost 1/8"! I have honed and honed with my Norton stones, and reduced the smile somewhat, but that crazy bevel in the middle is unchanged and, when honing, it is only the middle that is actually touching the hone.

I suspected that my stones were uneven, so I lapped them yesterday (and in fact they were uneven). But, more honing the TI hasn't helped at all. Heel and toe visibly do not touch the hone surface. Middle of the blade is popping hairs like all get out, but now I am stumped. It is almost as if there is a bulge in the middle area of the blade itself. I bought mine in the store ... I doubt they'd take it back now after all these weeks.

Any suggestions?

Originally Posted by igitur55

I suspected that my stones were uneven, so I lapped them yesterday (and in fact they were uneven). But, more honing the TI hasn't helped at all. Heel and toe visibly do not touch the hone surface. Middle of the blade is popping hairs like all get out, but now I am stumped. It is almost as if there is a bulge in the middle area of the blade itself. I bought mine in the store ... I doubt they'd take it back now after all these weeks.

Any suggestions?

Mine has a smile, too. The edge is pretty much parallel to the spine, so I think TI deliberately made them with smiles. What you're describing sounds completely normal for smiling blades. I (and most others on this site, too, I think) use a "rolling" x-stroke on the hone to get the entire edge in contact with the stone. If you do a search, I think you'll find better descriptions than the following, but the idea is you start the stroke with the heel (and spine) in contact with the hone. As you pull the blade through the stroke, you rock the blade forward to move the point of contact from the heel to the toe. At the end of the stroke, the toe is in contact with the stone.