What Straight Razor Have You Honed Lately????

Hey Chuck, what's the "Burr Method"??



..

 

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny!

 

https://scienceofsharp.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/simple-straight-razor-honing/

 

Yes, it is.

 

7/8” Thiers Issard “Dominator”
I thought this would be quick and easy upon first glance... nope.

After playing around in the 4k range and making sloooooow progress, I dropped down to the 1k. Suehiro 1&6k work then the Thuringian.

Happy honing.
Tom

 

My newly freshened Filly 14 wasn’t quite there, so it got its bevel reset on a Shapton Glass 2k followed by a Glass 4k. When the visual off the 4k was good, 10 canvas 20 cordovan and the HHT was perfect. The midgrit was one of my favorite Nakayama kiitas with diamond plate slurry and the finisher is a hard, fine probably Nakayama from the pattern and smooth edge. The edge was, as Bugs Bunny would say. ‘poifect’.

The pattern on the finisher is interesting, I call it the ‘sunrise stone’. Japan is the land of the rising sun and most of the really good jnats came from a mountain just outside Kyoto. If you look, you can see a sunrise behind a mountain in the stone’s pattern.

Cheers, Steve

 

St Joanis 39 frameback, about 6/8 in horn scales. No bevel at all on this one, either unhoned or pasted into a butterknife edge. I suspect unhoned, if someone was using it they’d have quit long before it got this dull. As usual in these old razors, there were a few tiny glitches on the edge to be removed too.

My normal bevel setter is a 2k, either a Shapton Glass HR or a Shapton Pro. This razor needed to have bevels cut, so that task fell to the Shapton Glass 1k. I used one layer of 1 mil Kapton since the spines on these are usually unhardened. Then I followed with the Shapton Glass 2k and 4k, and like many times, I had a little back and forth between the 4k and 2k getting what I wanted from the HHT off 4k. Once that was done, the usual Nakayama kiita with diamond plate slurry was followed by a pretty olive and orange Nakayama asagi, a hard fine stone that was slurried with a Nakayama tomo nagura.

Shave tomorrow!

Cheers, Steve

 

Och Aye the Noo...Nice razor..Those Type of Frame Backs are Very Hard Steel..The French Steel Ones in Particular are Very Hard Steel & Take a Moment to Cut the Bevel..They Need Special Attention All Through the Progression to Ensure the Correct Steel Removal..

Some French Steel is the hardest Steel I Have Ever Come Across...Some of the Modern TI French Razors are Very Hard as Well..

Billy..

 

Thank you @Billyfergie

Yep, the steel is hard, but nothing is a match for the Shapton Glass HR, those stones can peel off even the hardest steel and it’s best to be careful with them.

It’s a lovely old horn-scaled razor, good steel and in good shape. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s shave with it.

Cheers, Steve

 

Craftsman 9210
It was more of a refresh than a honing. 8k norton and 12 naniwa
The test shave went perfectly

 

It’s a beauty!

 

I Bought this New Range Classic Gold Dollar 6/8th with Mahogany Scales for My Own Collection...Honed on a Naniwa Super Stone Progression & Finished on my 17 K Escher Thuri...

This Blade is an Exact Copy of a Dovo 6/8th that in the UK Costs £450.00...This was £16.00 Posted..Bevel was Near Factory Set..Easy to Hone & in My Humble Opinion far Better Steel & Nicer Shaver than the Dovo it was Copied from & Better Ground...

Ooops...Done it Now...



Billy..

 

Interesting, I just got in a GD Shave Club 2017 edition from another honer that simply could not get it to pop, under the loupe I am counting at least 3 different bevels

I know part of the problem the last two people honing it have had, is the thickened heel even on the shoulderless design, your post is making me wonder if the other problems were Operator errors on the hones.

Hmmmmmm

 

Gold Dollars are hit or miss. Sounds like the gentleman has one that has a thicker spine over the heel, and if you use different angles to the stone (90 - 45 etc) you will get multiple bevels. Same is true of a worn razor that’s been honed for a long time on narrow hones, they tend to get thicker over the heel - there’s an image of a tapered W&B spine in the honing tutorial. The solution is pretty easy (if that’s the only problem the GD has lol) don’t vary the angle so the same length of the spine is always on the hone. Images above, if this razor had a spine thicker over the heel, these two different angles would cut two different bevels.

Lately I’ve been seeing them low in the middle of the spine on one side, so if you use a sliding X, the hone will ride into the low middle and round the bevel on that side.

Cheers, Steve

 

Here’s an interesting honing problem that you don’t see mentioned too often. The razor is an interchangeable blade frameback that’s in good condition and even the faux damascus pattern is mostly still there. Whoever used it in the past was only using one blade, so one blade is slightly narrower that the other. This means that one blade’s bevel will be a different angle from the other because the spine is of course the same. And every time you hone a blade both the spine and the edge are going to have to wear in together which will maybe wear the spine in normal use of both blades more than you’d like.

This is a case where tape is required IMO. I set both bevels using a fresh piece of 1 mil Kapton and one took longer than the other as expected, but once set with tape, I can hone either blade normally as long as I use the same tape.

These dual blade framebacks can be a decent travel option because you can carry two honed blades in the space of a single razor, but I’d want one with the original coffin which has a space and wrapper for carrying the spare blade without damaging it or you.

Cheers, Steve

 

Dunno Glen...Could be User Errors on the Hones...I Did Grind the Heel & Toe a Tad...To Round them Off for a Curved or Smiling Bevel or Shaving Edge..I Do the Same with Current Dovo Razors Mind...Two Second Job...I Personally Like a Smiling Edge..Could have Been a Bad Grind..Maybe...The Classic Range Sure are On the Ball theses Days..Blades & Scales...

Billy..

 

Aye..Tape is the Way Ta Go..Keep the Frame/Spine Intact for Consistent Results as You Say..

Billy..

 

Beautiful pictures! Who would have thought that honing could be so artful?

 

I recently ground a nick out of a C V Heljestrand.
I used a 4 sided diamond knife sharpener to grind out most of the nick.
I set the bevel and began the finish on a Norton 4000/8000.
The last stone was an ILR.
After I get stiction on the ILR under running water,
I put a drop of dishwashing detergent on each side of the blade
and use short light strokes until stiction starts to return.
Fire hose and shell strop.

This was a tremendous success.
This is my sharpest blade and my best shaver.

 

Using the Magic Marker Test (MMT)

Just finished putting this GDSC back into line

Multiple bevels tell a story

The heel was never brought into line, as you can see in this pic



Somebody Lifted the spine when they honed it, pretty easy to spot that in the pics below, a lifted spine tends to stand out really drastically, it is a cheat to a fast edge by many out there, can't understand why some defend its use ...

Lifted Spine





You can easily tell these things by using an MMT to start, note that you can see on some of the before pics, a red line, a clean steel line, and then a red line at the very edge
This tells you that the very edge was done at a steeper angle than what you are honing at...

This is during, you can see the bevel getting closer to touch down



You must even that up, it is really easy to see when people lift the spine and cheat the honing.

The after pics show that the entire bevel is now set and even






Hone On !!!



Edit

Blue/Green Escher finish
Note the even clean line now on the bevel,
BUT
I had to use 3 layers of tape to get that small of a bevel, because of the odd geometry built in at the factory and the honing that was done before I saw it ..
I bet it would take 5-6 layers to dial that bevel back into a tiny one at 16-17°
What I don't know is what the spine / bevel relationship looked like before it came here