Quote Originally Posted by Danocon View Post
Wow!

You guys are great. This is all good info.
Donovan I may take you up on the offer. I will cover shipping.
I am definitely in the honing the ura side only to control the burr camp when it comes to plane blades and single bevel knives. They have a layer of hardened tool steel forge welded to one side.

If the Ura was honed as much as the omote
1) The hardened steel would get progressively thinner until it disappeared. Whereas honing only or mostly the omote side, the razor becomes more narrow but the thickness of the hard steel stays mostly the same.
2) The hollow would gradually disappear making it more difficult to remove the metal because of the increased surface contact of the flat.

I see these razors as a single bevel tool.
When honing the ura-the edge and the top only contact the hone creating small flats-correct? This would establish a flat plane and the omote bevel angle would be relative to this plane.

However, having said all that-I understand the dangers of transferring the characteristics of one tool to another. But this idea of flat ura-beveled omote is so prevalent in Japanese tools I don't see it changing radically for razors.

At this point this is just all conjecture on my part. As Jim said using a kamisori will answer many of my questions.

Jim,

I appreciate any effort to find out about steel choices.

Dan
Dan,

I think you are slightly mis-imagining the structure of a Kamisori. The Ura is extremely hollow. Even if you honed only on the Ura, it would take a very long time to flatten out and remove all of the hagane (though, of course you are right about the thinness of the Hagane). Even so, doing that would eventually lead to the edge contacting with the Jigane on the Omote, which is why Kamisori are honed primarily on the Omote--to get all the jigane away from the edge.

Also, and I'm not sure how relevant this is, Iwasaki razors are hardened to a very high level--about 64 Rockwell. This is a point of pride with them, and a real pain for some of us honers. Just another data point.