What Straight Razor Have You Honed Lately????

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The Soviet razors can be quite good as you’ve discovered. We have a thread on them here that you might wan to check out.

 

Touched up my nice ivory Joseph Rodgers frameback on ‘big ugly’ a fine, deep layer Nakayama koppa. Should be a great shave tomorrow.

 

Joseph Elliot

It was my first restoration project.

 

F.W.E.
F.W.Engels Special
Solingen Germany

Just a touch-up. It wasnt as smooth as I liked it, and I took it down to the 3k stone, , worked a little with some Welsh Slate Stones, a little on a hard JNAT with Nagura slurries, and finished on an Arkansas Surgical Black. The bevel is so shiny, it looks like a mirror. It now has a very wickedly sharp edge.

 

Geneva Cutlery Co.
Geneva NY.

This one was a little bit of a Booger to sharpen. The steel is super hard, and tends to micro chip, if things arent perfect. Well, something went wrong. During a Nagura slurry, with a Diamond Lapping Plate, a small bit of diamond must have broken off, because I felt it while honing. I checked the bevel, and it had several micro chips in it, because of this. Well, I took it down to the 1k, briefly, after killing the edge. It went fast through the rest of the hones. I finished on the Wesh slates, JNAT, and Arkansas Surgical Black.

 

Friedr.Baurmann & Sohne
"Comfort 100"
Solingen Germany


This one was an easy one to hone. Straight as an arrow, and same progressions as the others above.

 

Honed up the NOS Cape 500 Swedish Steel, Shapton Glass 2k HR, Shapton Glass 6k HC, and finished on ‘big ugly’, a deep layer Nakayama.

 

Though diamonds can fracture and or detach any time they want to,
my technique with diamonds is move quickly and lightly
and never to press hard.

 

This one took a while...
3 sessions later and the heel/shoulder is finally reshaped to allow a decent edge.

I knew I had a potential problem but I couldn’t resist the opportunity. Seller’s photo:

The shoulder pretty much was the heel, and the heel hook was starting to form. Thought I could hone around that, but it just wasn’t fun.

Now I don’t mind taking a Dremel to a blade, but taking one to a Mastro Livi had me sweating a little.

Going with the theory I could always take more off but can’t put it back on, the first reshape was lacking. The shave wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t good.

Went after it one more time today and it worked. It behaved on the hones and delivered a wonderful shave. Shapton 4/8/16k was the easy progression after all that.

Happy honing.
Tom

 

To be honest, the lines of the razor flow better, now that you rounded the heel out. Good job.

..

 

Thanks Scott. It was looking a little chunky at the heel.

 

Absolutely. So many razors seem to be made with the stabilizer at the edge.

 

It looks bigger now ...

 

I bought another stubtail, Warburton Lisbon Cast Steel. Lummus’ comments would seem to date it to between 1772 (when they began marking ‘cast steel’) and around 1800 when ‘Lisbon’ changed to ‘Warburton’. Any comments on age would certainly be welcome!

This razor is not as cosmetically nice shape as my Shepherd, but like the Shepherd it has very little wear on it. It’s a candidate for a better restoration than I’m capable of, so I decided to hone it and give ‘er a shave (tomorrow most likely). I wanted to use tape on the spine because these old razors just don’t look right with shiny spines, so the first job was to measure the bevel angle at the heel and widest portion near the toe. It turned out that the angle is a very normal 17.7 degrees at the heel and 18.2 degrees at the toe, so I went with 1 layer of 1 mil Kapton (2.7 mil total) and added about 1/2 a degree to the existing angle.

The edge had 3 small chips, some light devil’s spit, and there wasn’t any bevel so a Shapton Glass 500 did the honors of removing the chips and DS, and forming the new bevels. The first thing that I noticed is that the steel is hard! Even the Glass Stones cut it fairly slowly, but progress was steady so I just used some slurry on the 500 and kept at it. And the steel is very good too, even at 500 grit the edge was straight and even, a sign of good things to come, and they did. Next was a 1k GS and a 2k GS. After the 2k, I did 10 canvas and 20 leather and did HHT to test for bevel set, and it passed very well with a little extra attention to the hollow area at the heel. A razor that will turn out good HHT at 2k is IMO, a really good one.

Next a 4k GS, a butterscotch Nakayama kiita for a pre-finisher though this stone is quite capable of finishing without another step, but I chose a small Nakayama iro from my trip to visit Alex Gilmore in Sonoma, using thin slurry and finishing with 20 clear water strokes. The HHT was silent root in or out, though the hollow area at the heel could use a bit more attention in the last few mm, but that’s a small job for another day.

 

I was watching that auction out of curiosity and glad to see it arrived in good hands. Nice work!

 

I want that razor. You have so many I would absolutely love to own.

 

Wait till you get into jnats! lol. You’ll get the razors, it just takes time, they didn’t happen overnight. I’ve been at it a while.

That Cape made the pair...

 

I am trying to get jnat to work. The HESS razor I have a good edge on from the 12k Naniwa. I'm now trying to see if I can get a smooth edge on the jnat with it. I currently just have the one jnat. That is a rabbit hole i am trying to descend slowly into.

 

If you need jnat help or an edge, just ask, glad to enable, er, help out!

 

I will take all the help I can get. Currently I go from the naniwa to the jnat with water. After I run about 50 or so laps on the jnat the edge seems more dull than it was before I started. I will post a pic of the jnat I have in a few. I dont know what jnat it is. I do however trust the person that sold it to me.