Hi,
I've recently decided to try my first restoration project.
I acquired a preatty battered Henry Barnascone from ebay and after several hours of hand sanding I decided to try and put an edge on it.
This is where the problem starts.
If I put the blade on the stone with the spine touching the stone, on one side both spine and edge touch the stone (see first picture) but on the other side it appears the spine is not straight and the edge towards the heel does not make contact with the stone. I hope you can see in the second picture the gap between edge and stone. I think this might be due to the heavy oxydation of a portion of the spine (there is still quite a bit of pitting).
I should probably have posted before doing it but, I taped the spine and honed the razor anyway trying to make sure the edge stayed in contact with the stone lifting the handle slightly while dragging the razor across the stone. Being not very experience at honing I found this exercise quite challenging. After a while I managed to put an edge good enough for a shave that was quite comfortable.
I feel though that the edge could be much better if I had a flat spine and could hone without having to worry about the contact with the stone.
Although the razor was very cheap and doesn't have any particular value to me, I'd like to learn as much as I can from this project.
My questions are:
-Should I try and flatten the spine? What is the best way of doing this? I suppose hone wear will be a consequence of doing this.
-The blade has a slight smile (as you can probably see from the picture I didn't really made a great job at sharpening the tip). Should I keep the smile or remove it for easier honing? I think the razor had it as the spine also has a sort of matching curve.
Sorry for the lengthy post and thanks in advance for the help.