Thread: UNEVEN BLADE WHEN HONING

Hello Gents,

I am in the process of honing a blade that is simply a pain in the a$$.
the blade does not sit evenly on my stones, so it is only sharpening certain areas.
It is a 1" Wade and Butcher Blade.

would anybody be able to suggest a method that I may use?
I am using norton water stones. 1000 to 8000 grit. Are there other tools that I may require?

I have tried some electrical tape on the spine of the blade but that does not seem to work.

Thank you in advance.

A lot of the old sheffield blades won't sit flat in the stone. I've honed a couple of hundred of them and all of them have required some sort of adjusted honing stroke to get them shave ready.

Is this a wedge blade or a hollow ground?

One layer of tape on the spine will help IME (avoids more spine wear and evens up the spine), and what usually works best for me is some sort of rolling X stroke with the heel leading making sure you get contact with the stone the whole way along the edge.

Sheffields quite often have a smile to them and often have uneven spine wear from previous owners so don't expect to just set the blade on the hone and go to work. It's never that easy..!

You'll probably also find it useful to get a stone in between your 1k and 8k as that's a pretty big jump. A 4k would be a good investment.

Hope that's of some help!

Old sheffield blades are notorious for blades that are not straight. Problems you could encounter with those are, toe/heel or both not laying flat on the stone, uneven grind, warped blades, uneven honewear. To attack the particular problem you need to diagnose what is it and what stroke to use to be able to contact the bevels to the stone. Use magic marker on the bevels and experiment with strokes to find out what works best. Some times the spine has to be ficed before the bevel can be set.

If you could post good pics of the blade people will be able to give you more detailed help on your problem.

+1 on the above advice. I've recently been having serious problems with a smiling razor with an uneven spine. After some frustration and advice from members on the forum I found the two things that really helped were tape and the rolling stroke. 2 layers of tape will help even up the spine and change it often as certain areas will wear more quickly than others. The biggest thing was learning the rolling pressure stroke, there's a good explanation of it in the wiki and in gsixguns (sp?) honing videos.

Good luck! You'll get it eventually, despite the frustration

Originally Posted by MattCastle

2 layers of tape will help even up the spine and change it often as certain areas will wear more quickly than others.

may be you mean the bevels? If you have tape on the spine you can't fix it because the tape is protecting it.

No, the tape won't fix the spine, but it'll act like a straight spine. If you set a bevel with tape, you always hone that razor with the same amount of tape.

Originally Posted by MattCastle

No, the tape won't fix the spine, but it'll act like a straight spine. If you set a bevel with tape, you always hone that razor with the same amount of tape.

If the spine has a problem you will not be able to set the bevels if you use tape unless the problem is fixed.

I wouldn't try to learn to hone on a razor like that. If you want, drop me a PM and I'll hone her up for you for the cost of shipping back.

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

I wouldn't try to learn to hone on a razor like that. If you want, drop me a PM and I'll hone her up for you for the cost of shipping back.

Do this. You say that you have a 1 inch blade, I bet it is a smiling blade,its a wedge and its warped.