First Major Restoration

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself right now. I've been out of shaving the last three years because I grew a full beard but recently picked it back up. So I was out vintage blade hunting and found an old Boker which had a pretty decent sized chip in the cutting edge. I bought it ($20) knowing it would take some major work, a lot of work I've never done before. I've restored before but only from blades with no chips and just needed some TLC. This was something more.

Anyways, I got the chip out with some 360 grain paper then moved to the 4,000 (that's all I have is the 4,000/8,000, don't really have a lot of money to spend on wet stones). It took some work and I got frustrated about half way because I couldn't see any progress. Also, it seems to hone uneven. The bottom doesn't hone as nice as the top. I just stropped it with a .5 diamond spray and it performs the hanging hair test on the top half of the blade. I'm actually very proud of that! But I need to take it back to the 8,000 to work on the bottom to see if I can get the bottom half of the blade to split a hanging hair.

Any feedback, advice, or comments? Overall, I'm pretty proud of my progress so far. I plan on putting some beautiful ram horn scales on it when I'm done.

A picture would be nice.
Jiffy marker is a good one to test your stroke to ensure you are getting a full edge stroke on every pass.

I did that to start with and that's one of the reason's why I figured it was honing like that even before I stropped it. Though that's a good idea, I'll make sure to keep putting marker on the edges to see how it's coming.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it before I started but I'll get a picture up here soon on what it looks like now.

Usually the bevel is set with a 1k stone but in your case make sure that you can shave arm/leg hairs at the 4k level before moving on to the 8k. %90 of the work is done at the bevel set. There are quite a few members in MI so maybe you can meet with one of them if the work becomes too frustrating. One on one help can't be beat.

That reminds me! I need to change my address on here...we just moved to Indiana in the last couple of months. :)

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Originally Posted by frankthetank86

That reminds me! I need to change my address on here...we just moved to Indiana in the last couple of months. :)

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got members in Indiana too! And depending on where you're at you're not too far from Ohio either!

A 4k/8k is better than a 12k (what I started with lol). What corner of the state are ya located? We've got an active member in every corner, if nothing else, so not too far in a given direction :tu.

If the bottom (the heel) isn't getting honed, you may have the stabilizer on the stone. You might need to take in the stabilizer some. But we need to see a picture before we can tell!