Thread: Too wide bevels on razors for restoration.

Hi all,

I'm in need of advice once again.

I got a few restorable razors

in order to start learning to restore razors.

The thing is that all of them have been honed

before with no great success.

Could you please advise me on how to make the bevels narrower?

I got my 1k Norton and I gave one of them circular strokes.

I thought that giving circular strokes would do the job but it didn't.

Maybe I didn't do it right and/or for a sufficient amount of time.

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Be well.

Bevels only get wider under normal use. If you want them narrower, you'll have to build up the spine width in order to increase the bevel angle. But this becomes problematic, because you have to keep the angle even and consistent EVERY time you hone the razor. And, of course, if the angle is to wide, the blade won't shave well.

Now, if your razors are heavy grinds, you could do a regrind to hollow out the blade a bit. If you make sure you get the steel at the bottom of the spine wear and the top of the bevel (and in between, of course), you won't have such wide bands of wear. But there has to be enough steel to make that work, and, down the road, you'll end up with the wear coming back anyway. So if you want to go that route, I'd say you'll want to get close to having the bevel set, mark the blade for steel removal, and then do the regrind.

Well if you have already restored the razors and I'm guessing they all have hone wear? Then what I would personally do run them lightly over the buffing wheels once more 300 grit then sisal wheel then polishing compound just to remove the large unwanted bevel you are talking about, then try resetting the bevel with two or maybe three layers of tape on the spine, if you find the size of the bevel to your liking then carry on, or you may want to increase the size just remove one layer of tape.

Jamie is exactly right - but be careful of heat build up on the very edge.

The size of a bevel is dictated by two things - blade geometry (dictated by the ratio of spine width to blade width) and grind (the amount of metal behind the bevel). You can inflence the first as Jamie says by using tape to increase the spine width thereby increasing the bevel angle - the more tape the bigger the angle the smaller the bevel. Unless you have the equipment there's not a lot you can do about the grind.

A few years ago a member posted a picture of a metal sleeve that could be slid on the spine to increase the hone/blade angle.

Measure the bevel angle FIRST. Then see what it is and then how many layers of tape to get to it. The matrix on here(I cant find the link) has computations for each layer of tape. If you are mid 20 or higher, it will never shave well IMO. But you never know.