Thread: Correcting blade geometry... your preferred solution?

Hi all,

On my most recent razor, I noticed that I could only get the first half of the blade sharp (toe side), and that the reason was an imperfection in my grinding technique (shoulder/stabilizer area was too low, or in other words, the hollow was 1-2 mm narrower at the heel than the toe). I think I also have a wide spot in the blade in the middle, where the smile has a bit of an uneven curve and would 'teeter' on this wide spot if set on a flat surface (like checking for a frown).

I went all the way back to a DMT 220, King 1200, and Norton 4/8 to re-shape the spine (grind through the shoulder) but this of course has left me with lots of hone wear. It's closer to even, but still likely not perfect. So my question is this: where you have a blade that has minor imperfections, do you prefer to fix by heavy honing, re-grinding, or working around it with rolling X strokes, etc?

Honestly

The fix is directly related to the issue at hand, so I read the blade, then apply the fix that will do the least amount of damage and still correct the issue...

So pretty much the answer is "I do what the razor tells me to do" that way I am not fighting the edge but rather working with it.

I have never fixed imperfect geometry on a blade. Through various honing gyrations I have managed to hone them up. I guess you could say it was more like living with imperfect geometry than fixing it. Wonder if that makes any sense?

Bob

I voted re-grind, but it really depends on exactly what the problems of the individual razor are. From an aesthetic standpoint I like my edge to follow the spine, in other words the blade width is equal at all points. I also make the spine thickness equal from heal to toe. That way the bevel angle is constant for the whole blade. Any workaround will be there to deal with at all subsequent touch up or honing sessions.

Like Charlie says "I don't make mistakes, I just make smaller razors".

Don't fix it as I have only sanding
So use multiple layers of tape and wear it down to shape then hone with a clean top layer when happy

I have been in the same boat. My goto is to set the bevel, and go from there, the bevel flats will show you where you need to grind. Even if you have to set the bevel by grinding on a flat platen or on a flat surface with coarse sand paper.

It is hard to let go of a razor. The next razor you grind will be better and so on and so on. I would mess with it a bit and see if I could fix it, then move on and make another blade and chalk this one up to learning. I have a box of malformed and screwed up razors, I learned a little bit form each one.

Chalrie

I'm with Glen in that it depends on the blade. I would tend to say rolling x, if that is what the profile needs, but it might be something else. That said, I don't ordinarily hone for anyone else, and I stopped buying razors in that kind of condition years ago.

I see I'm the first one to go for a lot of honing so I guess I'll try to explain. Off course this isn't my go to method, if a roling X-stroke works on a smiling edge for instance I'll simply use that, and sometimes with a very slightly bent spine a thin hone can work but I don't realy like that solution.

when correcting a slightly bent spine with a lot of honing the bevel will not look even (on one side you'll see a smile and on the other a frown) and you will see a similar patren on the spine, you can see this in the pictures below, personally I don't mind the honewear and this solution allows for easy tutch-ups

here you can see thick honewear in the middle on the spine

here the main hone were is near the heal and toe

Thanks, guys. I honed the bejesus out of this razor to try to get it all worked out.

In the end, I managed to get a lot of hone wear and some flat surfaces, but I think I ground harder I to the heel spine than the toe spine on one side so I have a new problem. C'est la vie.

I needed diamond to work through all the steel though, after trying all the stones from 1200 through 8000 and a coticule and a phig with some mystery nagura. In the end, I got through the wedgy metal with diamond psa sheets on flat marble tile (15 micron down to .5 micron) and a lot of elbow grease and swarf.

However, one of the slurries (I reckon) has the edge slightly worn in from the plane of the bevel and resulted in a useless shave. The irony is that this blade was wicked sharp before the 'repair'. Oh well. Maybe I'll learn a little more from this blade yet.

Thanks for the ideas!

For reference: