Thread: How would you define the issue on toes like this?

Looked pretty much factory for my old untrained eyes.

I've seen a lot of these worn to the toe razors. I suspect like you Chris that it is poor honing technique. Possibly a heavy hand on the strop too. The wear on the spine shows tells me it is a very well used razor. This particular seller is a retired barber in Houston who is selling his collection piecemeal. He has had some incredible blades in the past.

Yeah, you can look at the uneven wear on the spine and see that the honer was too heavy handed. I had an old barber once show me how he would deliberately round off the point on a spike point to avoid nicking a customer. Nothing so severe as that though.

Sarah Fergusoned = to much toe action.

I have heard blades with even spine wear along the whole length of the blade but more wear at just the toe referred to as "muted spikes." Sometimes this may be done intentionally, but sometimes it may be the unintentional result of technique.

toe rot
blah blah

I'll have to grab a razor out of my razor boxes and snap some pics. I have a few that I got in a razor lot that exhibit a much more pronounced non-original honing error taper than the one I put in this link.

There should be a generally accepted term for this. We've got frowns, smiles, etc, we should pin down the hone tapered toe issue.

Maybe that's it: Hone tapered toe (hone tapered toe = bad).

Chris L