One awesome aspect of sheffields...

You can have one that looks dilapidated, or with corrosion issues that would horribly compromise a super hollow ground blade, clean it off, feed it to a low grit hone and find good steel.

Nasty looking blob of doomhttp://i433.photobucket.com/albums/q...psslxzay6b.jpg

I ground away at it with a pencil till it was at steel level, sanded a bit and hit it with polish

http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/q...psf9ohrluf.jpg

http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/q...psvdracozt.jpghttp://i433.photobucket.com/albums/q...psicgbazuu.jpg

Black hole on the back would not budge. It is deep and in an unimportant area so I will leave it be. Anyway, there were two chips from the edge and lots of teeny pits in the bevel as it was oxidized and dormant for decades. Fed it to a shapton glass 500 and found good steel. Bevel is shaving arm hair effortlessly. All I need to do is finish cleaning up the 500 scratches with a 1k and then I can hone it later today to shave ready. The shapton is an amazing stone for heavier metal removal. It is very aggressive, refuses to load, stays true, is big, and is splash and go. Surprised it doesn't get talked up more.

http://youtu.be/Jfv-Cd2lvgI

Man, that bevel looks beautiful!

At the time this grind must have seemed like a miracle compared to the near wedge. The geometry is genuinely consistent. I didn't need any crazy tricks to get a nice even result and it continued to hone beautifully with no drama. Steel is on the softer end of things. I like these, I know some ppl don't, but you still get the really heavy, stiff blade, but you also get some ease of maintenance.

Great save! And I agree with you about the Shaptons, they're terrific stones and deserve more attention from razor guys.

I've attacked that 500 with 4 wedges, like 6 hollow grounds and a knife recently and with a wipe of the palm, it shrugs off all that swarf and just keeps chugging along aggressively. It also leaves such an incredibly consistent scratch pattern, you could probably use it as your primary bevel hone if you had to. You just need to knock the foil off before you move on.

I've been thinking of picking up a shapton glass 2000 for more typical bevel work. They make great products.

I use the 1000 GS for bevel setting and can't say enough for it. It's significantly better than the King 1000 which I used when I started honing. The King is a rather slow stone that dishes easily - although I must concede it's great for kitchen knives.