Thread: Dealing with a frown

Hi all,

Here is an old cheapy I picked up to practice various restoring techniques.

Would I be correct in assuming that the best way to deal with a frown of this caliber would be to breadknife it, establish a new bevel and work it up from there?

opinions?

IMHO, based on experience, the best way is to pass on razors in that condition, although that one isn't bad really. Since you have it you may as well bring it back into service. I've done breadknifing on a couple and I never will again. Since seeing how much work it was to get a bevel after the breadknifing I now keep the spine slightly off of the diamond plate, or whatever your choice of hone, and do circles, X strokes, until I am back to an acceptable blade profile.

You could also do it with a few, maybe 3 or 4 pieces of tape but I just keep the spine off until I'm clear of the frown. Then I do 1 piece of tape and begin to set the bevel as normal. Doing it this way gives you a head start on the bevel. Breadknife it and you''re starting with a squared bevel. Just IMHO.

I don't have alot of restoration experience.. actually none when it comes to razors. But if it were me I think I would consider a re-grind to straighten it out, looks pretty bad. But there very well may be an easier route.

thats a very frawn edge. i would breadknife that. you might also need to fix the shoulder when you breadknifed it that much cant tell on the picture but looks like its pretty close to the start of the shoulder..

Jimmy is right on point. I use his technique for removing small frowns, however, chips, I do bread knife. He is right though, it can be a real pain to start from the flat edge of breadknifing (this is an extreme restoration style though, and I only use it as a last resort to speed up the steel removal). I would suggest watching vids (gssixgun has one on breadknifing) and others on the site about honing out a frown well before attempting this yourself.

If you Google "gssixgun, honing" you are going to find quite a few vids on my channel, if you look close you will find several that deal with fixing these types of problems...

That edge has several different issues that need fixing...

This blade has more than just a frown to fix.
The pic is not quite clear to me but it looks like there is a lot of corrosion in the tip area, that might be the blade killer in that case.

Awesome, thanks for all the advice. Jimmy, I will start with your suggestion and depending on how it goes, may progress to a breadknife operation. I will check out all the vids too, they will be a big help.

I bought this razor specifically for the condition it is in. I can hardly may it worse, and should gain some good experience working with it. I'm actually quite looking forward to tearing it down and building it back up again.

Go for it. I tried learning this way too. I used a brutal two-sided water/oil stone to bread knife and roughly set a bevel, then Norton 4/8k. I have since bought. King 1k as well.

Can't hurt it if that's what you bought it for!

Well here are some pics after my first attempt, the blade is now flat with no chips. and what looked like rust at the toe in the previous photos, was only some very shallow tarnishing, it will com off very easily.

I watched gssixguns breadknifing vids (thanks mate), they really helped. I think I will actually end up with quite a serviceable blade after a bit more work.

I have to get a 1k hone now to continue with this, while I wait to get that I can start cleaning.