Thread: Help with a chip

Originally Posted by shaveshell

Hi, I'm in the process of restoring my first Ebay razor purchase. Well, when using the dremel to polish, I put a tiny chip on the cutting surface of the blade. It's a small rounded chip about the size of half a seseme seed. So, is there a way to get rid of it (I assume I should)? Will taking it to my norton 4000/8000 do it? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
matt

I just finished repairing my first used blade, and it had a chip about the size you described. I took it to my Norton 1000 and I lost count but I swear I had to do 1000 strokes to fully eliminate it, I was very tempted to take it down to my 220 but was warned against that as a newbie. Took a long time but it was worth it, just shaved with it. Smooooth

as small as you're describing, and assuming it's not a wedge, your 8k should do the job.
It is best to look at your edge under magnification, if this is not possible, I would say hone till the chips are no longer visible, and then give an extra 5 or 10 laps for good measure...

I hijacked this thread for my own chipping problem but am happy to see more advice popping up.

I don't have a 4k grit, so I tried some easy circles on my 8k for awhile but saw zero difference through my lens. I am using a telescope eyepiece lens for magnification, so am not sure exactly what the magnification is - I estimate it about 40x though (.96" diam. cylinder, 20 mm lens)

Anyway, since I saw nothing I went to the 1k and did a few circles. I saw no difference to the chip (actually two chips close to each other on the edge) so I did 25 circles each side. No visible change. I began to grow impatient as I am sometimes list to do and I didn't want to kill the spine but was too lazy to tape it so I lifted the spine about 15 degrees off of the hone and ran about 100 more aggressive circles* and finally saw a little change in the blade. Because I have no intent to encourage anyone else to do as I did, I won't say how else I abused the blade but I did eventually get the chips out and the blade's edge is straighter, more consistent, and more uniform in appearance than it was before I started.

Now I will probably abandon the restoration forum and head over to the honing forum since my razor is now little sharper than a letter opener. This appears to be my opportunity to learn patience on the 8k grit

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*disclaimer: If you don't know what you're doing when it comes to honing, please don't assume I do. Read the stickies or buy Lynn's dvd or something.

Also, I will attempt to describe the chips' size, shape, and appearance: The chips were separated from each other by about a quarter of an inch, and I could probably line up 15 or 20 similarly sized chips between them. As a rough estimate, I'd say the chips were about a third of a millimeter long. One chip was semicircular in shape (as if the blade had slid across a microscopic rod) and the other chip was messier as it was wider than it was deep. Looking straight on at the edge under high power I could see that the edge was still uniformly straight across the chipped area. This led me to believe there was no damage to the edge other than the depth of the chips (no warping or angular abrasion)

I estimate that I honed the edge down about half a millimeter, so I can still call it a 5/8 blade within the sixteenth inch tolerance.