Thread: uneven wear on spine and blade

This is an old razor that i restored a few weeks back.

Before i begin i should mention that the blade itself is almost dead straight - no smile, no frown. If i put a caliper on it the back would be the same size as the front. This is how i received the blade.

On one side the spine wear is more at the back and hardly touched at the top
On the other side the wear is reversed, lots of wear on the end and hardly any wear at the start

The blade itself has a similar wear patten..

At the end where there is no wear there is a slight bevel and at the end where there is lots of wear there is a large bevel.

My guess is because its reversed on both sides its kept the blade straight... otherwise the bevel would be closes to the spine at either the front or the back...

Now my question is... should this be corrected or should i leave it?

I have honed it although only to get an edge to see how it shaves and it shaves good, i wouldn't say its great. I also find that i need to re-strop half way through my shave with this blade, i mean i could complete the whole shave but if i re-strop it makes the shave much better.

If this was corrected would it shave better.

or

should i just correct it as i re-hone it each time?

Is this seen on old blades some times?

Surely someone knows!

It could have been the hand that honed it or that the grind dictated how the spine shows wear. Should you correct or leave...easy one, leave it alone as long as you can. No since removing steel if you don't need to. Looks like there isn't much wear on that razor anyway, enjoy it and when it is time to rehone, you (or your choice of honer) can slowly even out the spine wear. May take a couple of trips to the hones, but that's a LOT of shaves in between.

Its interesting how it has been honed, i would have thought the wear would be the same on both sides. Its like someone went out of there way to put pressure on the worn edges.

Originally Posted by Brighty83

Its interesting how it has been honed, i would have thought the wear would be the same on both sides. Its like someone went out of there way to put pressure on the worn edges.

I could easily be the case that the person who has been honing it just didn't nail the even strokes/pressure for each direction. I found that when I started honing I had a "dominant" direction while honing, until I got it figured out (practice). My technique changed because I really tried to make my strokes more consistent pressure wise... but for someone not too worried about anything other than a shave, it would be easy to put this kind of wear on a spine with the difference between their dominant and off-hand strokes.