Thread: Smiling Geneva Cutlery

So I picked up a Geneva Cutlery razor from an antique shop a couple months back and what originally caught my eye was the beautiful smile and great condition of the razor...even though one scale was missing on the tang end of the pivot pin. I bought it and after smiling over it for awhile...I noticed that the smile wasn't square. It was definitely honed by someone who was inept at the rolling X. As a result, the toe end of the blade is narrower than the heel.

What is a relatively easy way to straighten the smile without taking too much off the blade? It's a little narrower than I usually go for (5/8 on the heel, closer to 4/8 at the toe).

Thanks for the input, Gents.

-Derek

at first picture will help.
Next why take the smile away? just create right smile on the heel and you should be ok.
easiest way is to tape rest of the blade and hone the heel side.
more complicated will be using bread knifing or grind it out.
hope this helps

I have noticed that some razor honers of old had a habit of lifting the heal off the stone at the end of the stroke. This caused the last inch or so of the razor to have a much stronger curve than the rest of the blade. I don't think this is necessarily the wrong way to hone a razor, just a different way.

The way I have delt with razors like this is to try to hone them the same way instead of taking off lots of steel trying to correct what is really only a cosmetic problem.