I ruined it! Please Help me!

I was preparing for a nice shave with my newly bought kamisori. I did 30 passes on my leather strop, and then left the razor as usually to get the soap, the brush and the rest of the hardware. As I turned the razor falls down to the floor. It got two major chips in the edge.

Is there any possibility of fixing this damage and bring it back to use?
What should I do?

I own a Norton 220/1k comb stone, a Norton 4k/8kcomb stone, a Japanese natural corresponding to approximately 400-800grint, a Slovakian natural corresponding to approximately 6k-10k, and the Chinese natural finishing stone.

Should I start from 220 grit until the chip is eliminated or should I start with something else?
With what kind of passes? 7-1 ? 5-1? 1-1?

What would you do to fix this kamisori razor ?



Attachment 74904Attachment 74905

If you are used to honing these type of blades you can do it. Be prepared, you are going to lose a LOT OF METAL. Start with the 220, there is no sense in losing time and creating work with a higher grit. You might consider a different finisher instead of the Chinese 12k.

I read the Wiki about treating these chips, but it refers to European razors, not kamisori razors, so I am not sure if I can “breadknife” in the same way the kamisori because it has a very particular anatomy from both sides and I am afraid that “breadknifing” it will alter significantly the small curve of the front side of the blade (the one with the letters). If you own a kamisori you will understand to what I am referring at.

I also have this very low grit Chinese stone, should I start “breadknifing” from this stone?
it must be 120 – 160grit.

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Originally Posted by Slur

I read the Wiki about treating these chips, but it refers to European razors, not kamisori razors, so I am not sure if I can “breadknife” in the same way the kamisori because it has a very particular anatomy from both sides and I am afraid that “breadknifing” it will alter significantly the small curve of the front side of the blade (the one with the letters). If you own a kamisori you will understand to what I am referring at.

I also have this very low grit Chinese stone, should I start “breadknifing” from this stone?
I must be 120 – 160grit.

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yes you can use same technique to fix it but the nuance is to leave the back alone.
Still you will loose a lot of metal here before it is fixed.

I breadknifed the razor as indicated and then did many passes on the 220 grit. The edge was uneven as to width but with appropriate pressure to the smaller point I brought it to near even.
However It doesn’t pass the arm hair test.
I passed it many times from the 1k, and it still doesn’t cut any hair in the arm. The razor is dull.
I don’t know what to do. Continue to the 220? Continue to 1k? Pass to 4K?
I am afraid that the total remodeling of the razor in the breadiknifing and the passes on the 220 may have altered the razor significantly to a point that it is not able to be sharp again.

Try the 4k Norton before you do the arm hair test, I do not use mine but I have heard off 1k norton is hard to have arm hair.
As far as number of passes on back and front, the recommendations I have seen here vary among 7/3, 8/2, 10/1.

I'm a rank beginner, so I probably should just keep my mouth shut, but ---- if I understand the geometry of a Kamisori, the side you are sharpening is like a wedge. The rule I go by is - stay with the coarse stone or DMT until you have set the bevel, period. When you can cut arm hair, then, and only then, go to your next stone up in the sequence. You might use tape to speed up the process, but that is probably a cultural violation. If it was mine, and the damage was serious enough, I might make a few passes on my 2x72 grinder to set the bevel. Low speed, light pressure, cold water. Good luck, and sorry for your loss.

With a Kamisori you can't take too much metal off because as you can see from the profile the razor is canted towards the hollow ground side or writing side. If you really start to remove metal you will lose this profile and then you will need to get the entire thing reground and I don't know anyone in this country who does that. With a western razor you can always keep going and wind up with a smaller size but that is not an option with a kamisori.

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Originally Posted by skipnord

if I understand the geometry of a Kamisori, the side you are sharpening is like a wedge.

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No, it is not like that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thebigspendur

With a Kamisori you can't take too much metal off because as you can see from the profile the razor is canted towards the hollow ground side or writing side. If you really start to remove metal you will lose this profile and then you will need to get the entire thing reground and I don't know anyone in this country who does that. With a western razor you can always keep going and wind up with a smaller size but that is not an option with a kamisori.

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I am afraid that you are right. This is what I was trying to say a few posts above.

Thanks, Slur. I should have just kept my mouth shut. If you could diagram a kamisori, and show how it is sharpened, it would be helpful.

The important thing about kamisori is that your edge has to be hagane, the hard steel, which is only on the stamped side. The unstamped side is all soft jigane, so you have to take off that jigane in a higher ratio than hagane to establish an edge. By bread knifing it, you basically took off good steel back to the same level as soft steel.

I can't imagine there's any way to fix it at this point without honing to the point that your omote becomes completely flat, thus needing a regrind.

What Jim said...

http://i.imgur.com/tgKqq.png

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Originally Posted by JimR

The important thing about kamisori is that your edge has to be hagane, the hard steel, which is only on the stamped side. The unstamped side is all soft jigane, so you have to take off that jigane in a higher ratio than hagane to establish an edge. By bread knifing it, you basically took off good steel back to the same level as soft steel.

I can't imagine there's any way to fix it at this point without honing to the point that your omote becomes completely flat, thus needing a regrind.

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Thank you very much Jim for this helpful comment, but I really don’t believe that this is the problem on fixing this razor.
I say that because the razor is being honed from the back side (without letters) where must be the soft metal according to your indications. This side of the blade is hollow ground and the part of the edge ending to lay on the hone is actually only the hard steel of the front side of the blade (with the letters). So I don’t believe that there is a steel quality problem on the new edge that will be formed.
The real problem according to my opinion is the anatomy of the blade that has to be remodeled and the two curves of the blade, the major on the back side, and the minimal on the front side (because also the front side has a very light, inversed curve, it is not direct).

I think that I worked enough on the 220 stone and the razor is actually as a sharp knife. Later I will work it on the 1k to see if I make any progress.

Slur, that is pretty much what I said.

The majority of the honing is done on the Omote, the front side. Because you now have to take off enough jigane to hit the Hagane coming from the Ura, the slight concavity on the omote will disappear, and you will have a flat omote. Flat omote are VERY difficult to hone, and sometimes can't take a good edge at all because the water will create a cushioning effect and keep the edge off the stone.

Just to clarify, here's a crude drawing of a Kamisori as seen from the "top", the non handle end.
Attachment 74971

The yellow is Jigane, which won't take a shaving. The blue is Hagane, the "edge" steel.

The entire design is based around the idea of removing Jigane from the Omote to reveal hard blade steel on the Ura.

Removing chips in the edge of a Kamisori is a difficult procedure because of this problem. FYI, Mizuochi-san never takes a kamisori below 6K because too coarse a stone will eat Jigane like crazy and again, it will ruin the grind of the razor.

Mizuochi maybe is right but I had to do it for a necessity, not for the pleasure of honing.
I ate a lot of jigane yesterday on the 220grit and this was absolutely necessary to remodel the blade. However, if jigane is the soft part of the blade it could be removed for necessity reasons as this one.
What I am saying is that the angle of the ura part starts long away from the original edge, thus, there is plenty of space to create a new edge which will be at an angle as the original and created from the hagane part of the steel.

The first pic is from the blade when bough (before the accident) and it shows that the angle is formed far away from the final adge, at least in this particular kamisori:
http://i51.tinypic.com/10elveq.jpg


In the second pic I try to help understand what I am saying:
http://i51.tinypic.com/2q3wyeu.jpg

http://i55.tinypic.com/2meuzcn.jpg

I did my best. The edge looks very sharp. It easily passed the arm hair test and the hair hanging test.
Tomorrow I will shave test to check if it is as sharp as it was before the accident or not.:gl:

Thank you all!

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Originally Posted by Slur

http://i55.tinypic.com/2meuzcn.jpg

I did my best. The edge looks very sharp. It easily passed the arm hair test and the hair hanging test.
Tomorrow I will shave test to check if it is as sharp as it was before the accident or not.:gl:

Thank you all!

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Best of luck and please let us know what happens.

Slur , how did you go with keeping the front (omote) hollow ?

Oz,
I think it comes down to the size of the razor the small ones probably will not be good to fix that way, but the bigger size has enough hollow to allow for fixing a big chip.

Yes, I did a small one that needed the omote hollow eased a little. Just wondered how much he ground off. Only showed the ura pic post repair.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by onimaru55

Slur , how did you go with keeping the front (omote) hollow ?

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Omote (no letters) is called “back” if I am not mistaken, not “front”, but I see that Jin calls Omote front side, so I am not sure which is front and back so I will use the Japanese termns. In the omote part of the blade I did the most of the work. In the pics you will see that the edges of the hollow curve (not the cutting edge) were reduced in order to permit to the new cutting edge of the razor to touch the hone as was the case with the old edge before the incident. Remodel this curve was essentially to create a new edge, because after breadknifing the razor, the new edge had to be created with the blade of approximately 3mm sorter and the new edge was not touching the hone, so big part of the eliminated metal was from the edges of the curve of the omote side, which is actually soft metal as Jim demonstrated (jigane). By doing this, the hollow curve was reduced a little but it was maintained. The same counts for the small hallow part of the ura side, which was reduced a little by breadkniging but it was also maintained. I don’t see that as a problem. As the whole blade became 3mm shorten, all parts of its structure had to be reduced.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mainaman

Oz,
I think it comes down to the size of the razor the small ones probably will not be good to fix that way, but the bigger size has enough hollow to allow for fixing a big chip.

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Even if this razor was not considered a big one, it was approximately 5/8, it still had enough hollow for fixing the chip. Fortunately, the chip was not big.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by onimaru55

Yes, I did a small one that needed the omote hollow eased a little. Just wondered how much he ground off. Only showed the ura pic post repair.

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The reason I didn’t show the omote was that I am not able toget any quality photos from my cell phone and the omote part of the kamisori reflects badly the light.
However, it is absolutely necessary to show the omote side as the major part of the work was done there.
Once again, I am really sorry about the quality of the photos. I really can’t get anything better.


In the following images you see the omote side of my kamisori. Note that the hollow curve has been reduced significantly, but it is still maintained. Note the hollow curve edges that I had to reduce.

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6008/0137ap.jpg
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/7173/0136s.jpg
http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/9004/0135w.jpg
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/3706/0135bd.jpg

Slur,
Omote is the side with no kanji , it is also refereed to as the face of the kamisori.
Ura is the side with kanji and is also referred to as the back of the razor.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mainaman

Slur,
Omote is the side with no kanji , it is also refereed to as the face of the kamisori.
Ura is the side with kanji and is also referred to as the back of the razor.

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Ok, thanks. Now it is clear.
Omote=front
Ura=back

Thanx for the pics Slur. A bit blurry but looks like you did ok with the restoration :)

Yep. Ura is back in Japanese & omote is front. Took me ages to remember which is which ;)

I just shaved with it and I am very satisfied. Very smooth, very deep, as it was before the incident. It remains an excellent shaver.
If I notice any problems in future shaves I will post them here.
Thank you all once again!