I have had some time to hone this week and wanted to try a few things out. Long post I’m afraid - apologies.
As practice I decided to work on some cooking knives that have seen better days. In the kitchen drawer I have two Chinese chef’s knives and an ageing Sabatier which hasn’t been sharpened properly for twenty years and the edge of which had become so messed up that it looked serrated. I bought a couple of bevel guides, and, using
@gssixgun ’s methods for removing chips removed the serrations and reset the bevels on DMT bench plates and Shaptons. They came up like knew. Heartened I worked the same way on a large Sheffield carving knife which took a fantastic edge.
Moving onto hones, I took the various advice about the Naniwa large lapping stone I have. Checking it with a straight edge it was clearly dished. It lapped flat nicely. I was pleased with this. Little did I know the mistake I had made - more on that later.
I have two Charnley Forest stones, a Dalmore Blue and a Water of Ayre. Decided to lap the Charnleys and the Dalmore. I checked them all with a straight edge. They were all supposed to be lapped before I got them, but were all slightly convex. I thought nothing of this and spent AGES lapping them perfectly flat. My fifteen year old son was curious and helped for a time - I might make a convert of him yet.
The Dalmore smelt a little of oil, so did a nondescript stone I picked up and a very small Escher which was completely thick with oil. These I soaked in bike degreaser over night.
One Charnley Forest I have been using with water, the other I wanted to set up with oil. Taking @Billyfergie’s advice I acquired some Bisley gun oil.
Next onto razors themselves - first two Bokers - a stainless and an Elite. The stainless just needed a refresh which I did on the oil Charnley Forest. It was a bit meh at first. Some research and people were recommending a lighter oil, so I diluted the Gun Oil with a little WD40 and it worked a treat. I really like the combination of the two oils and will experiment with these further.
The Elite was brand new, factory edge, sealed in packet. I set the bevel on a Naniwa Chosera, originally intending to work through a synthetic progression, but the natural stones were calling me. My Dragon’s Tongue is the only stone that has been used so far, but based on conversations with
@DaltonGang I wanted to try my purple Llyn Melynllyn. Progression: Naniwa 1K —> Dragon’s Tongue —> Llyn Melynllyn. For the two Welsh stones, with slurry, diluting gradually to water. When I finished with the Llyn Melynllyn, and don’t ask me why I did this, I went back to the Dragon’s Tongue and started again, then back to the Lluyn Melynllyn. I really don’t know why, but instinctively it just feels right to do this.
@DaltonGang - I would appreciate any advice on working with the Welsh stones.
I finished on the the water Charnley Forest and the CrOx / FerOx. Shaved like a dream, as did the stainless. The natural stones were a joy to use. They give such nice feedback, and cut slowly so I have time to even out my clumsy strokes.
The third razor was my favourite TI. A big 7/8 Spartacus which still has the factory edge and has only had pastes. It had developed micro chips. My intent was not to use the full
@gssixgun approach to remove them, but to lightly reset the bevel and hope that would remove them, given how small they were.
This is where the trouble started.
I swear I only honed lightly on the Naniwa 1K but very very quickly the bevel went sideways. On one side a very pronounced smile started to appear, on the other a frown. I panicked. I love this razor. I did not want wreck it or make it ugly. I tried taping, but this made no difference. I tried taping to encourage a smile - but that didn’t seem to help even the frown, and then I tried taping differently on both sides. Still nothing. I can only believe at this stage that the spine bows, and yet the razor passes the wobble test.
It scared me how quickly the Naniwa took metal from the razor. I am so ashamed of my honing work that I don’t even want to show a picture of the razor at the moment, but suspect I am going to have to send this one to one of the experts on this forum to do something with. It’s my first disaster / failure - and it’s on a a razor I love.
The bevel itself looks good at the edge under magnification, but moving back from the edge it’s not straight and very ugly. I am tempted to run it through a progression with the bevel as is and see how it shaves. Then go back in future when I am more experienced to do something to clean up the bevel.
After a day recovering from the shock, I decided to slow things right down. I wanted to try setting a bevel with a natural. Based on research and input from various places it seemed like the Dalmore Blue might work with a heavy slurry.
Researching bevel setting with natural stones, I came across this video:
from the superior shave and suddenly regretted lapping those convex stones so flat. I also wished I had kept the Naniwa lapping stop dished, to use it to lap my stones convex.
I chose another TI. Crazy you might think - but I wanted to start from scratch on a similar razor with a completely different method. Like the other, this had only been set up using pastes, so I would be putting a new bevel on it. I have no slurry stone, so I used a coarse DMT plate. This was challenging. The slurry tended to stick to the plate rather than the stone and when thick enough, dried out very quickly. After a bit of experimentation I found that it was better to wet the stone and leave dried slurry on the DMT. Eventually I found that soaking the stone, building the slurry, honing was the right sequence, and I had to do this a number of times. The slow gently work with the natural stone produced a beautifully even, straight, clean bevel under magnification.
I used the Dragons’ Tooth —-> Llyn Melynllyn sequence again - running it through twice as before but this time finishing with an odd green stone I picked up cheaply.
The result was really good. I got a fabulous shave from it yesterday. The one slight problem was that I taped the spine. Seems like the factory didn’t. So now there is my bevel, and the remains of TI’s behind it. It seems to make no difference to the shaving performance but I guess I should go back and put a bevel on without tape?
I shouldn’t need to set any more bevels on my current razors. I am going to pick up some clunkers and work on them next.
Score: 4 Knife successes, 3 razor successes, one razor disaster.
Lesson’s learnt:
Working with thick slurry without a slurry stone.
Removing chips (at least on knives for the moment)
Bevel setting on a natural
Welsh Stone progression
Working with 2 inch wide stones
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