Thread: Smiling Razor Re-Grind

Okay, this may be a stupid question but I have a few straights that have smiling blades and I have been trying for months to acquire the technique in order to hone these blades and have acquired nothing but frustration. At this point I have given up trying to hone these as the only thing I have done is make them duller. My question is that I was wondering if there is a way that the razor can be put to the grinder and sorta re-shaped in order to make it so that the whole blade contacts the stone at the same time.

Generally a bad idea. Most razors with a smiling edge were either made that way, or honed that way. I would recommend to learn to hone them as the spine follows the edge during honing and the spine is set to following a smiling edge. Many new shavers are wanting to do this. I recommend to buy a "straight" and sell the smilers or put them away until you learn how to hone and strop them. Smiling edges are that way for good reason. They shave Awesome when sharp!
OR, you could just send them to me!

Believe me I have been trying like heck to get the hang of honing a smile. I have a few straight Blades and can hone them up real nice so I have the ability to bring a razor to shave readiness but these smilers are driving me nuts and I really hate to sell them as they are in Scales that I hand carved.

I am hip. Just display them until you learn. I did! I recommend learning a rocking/rolling X stroke. Once you learn, it is simple as can be. Look in the Wiki (library) on the subject. Gotta be something there?

bluegrod, Can we see your smile blades? If it's not a problem for you.
Because some blades became smiling after many years of using and honing. And possibly, there're some variants to make them straight.
But some blades can't be changed ...they were born with smile.
Like this:

Beauty Alex. Some of the best razors have smiles. Stick with the honing and it will pay off in the long run. Here's a couple more smiles.

Originally Posted by bluegrod

... these smilers are driving me nuts ...

We hear ya. Lots of people think they can professionally hone razors because they can hone the easy, straight ones to some shave ready standard. Those of us that have many a razors of all types know that there is more to it than that. When I was learning to code for PC's someone told me that I needed to have lots of problems and work through them before I could be considered good at coding. I found this to be true. Here are some pics of a true wedge smile I had the fortune to hone a while ago. I am including the before and after pictures to give some perspective to my saying that it was easier to refinish the blade and re-scale than to home this PITA but now that it is sharp I wouldn't trade it for any other razor.

Don't put your smiling razors to power tools! Save them and learn to hone them or sell them.

What helped me a lot when learning how to hone a smiling razor was using a magic marker along the edge. I "painted" the bevel with the marker and then I could see how my stroke on the hone was actually affecting the edge. I was doing okay on the stroke going away from me but on the return stroke I was only hitting the middle and toe and not coming anywhere near the heel.

As soon as I started getting frustrated with my poor results I wiped it off, oiled it, and then walked away for a few days. There was no point in getting mad and not enjoying what I was doing.

In the end when everything finally clicked I thought to myself, "huh, that was easy". It really was, but I just had to have the patience to accept I had to put in the work in order to get the results that I wanted.

So while things can be done to "straighten" the edge, it might be better to keep at it and revel in the fact that when everything falls into place for you, the shave will be that much better.

You don't need to regrind a smiling blade to get it honed, you just have to put it diagonally on the hone and make X-strokes. See here: Honing A Smiling Straight Razor Blade - YouTube