So last night a "Gold Monkey" arrived, I got it to do some modification experiments for when I see cool stuff on the internet and want to try them.
It's warped, the spine has uneven thickness. It did not lay flat on the hone, one side had the tip raised from the surface of the stone by like 1.5 mm, just a crazy gap. Yes it has a smile, but that was extreme, half the edge was waaay above the stone. So I double taped the edge and worked the spine on the 150 side of the diamond plate. I removed lots of steel and stopped when it wasnt moving the edge towards the stone anymore. So I smoothed it out a little on the 600 side, did some work on the other side to kind of match the sides.
It did require quite a profound rolling stroke on the 1k, but I managed to hone it to a nice shaver.
I set a bevel on the 1k worthy of shaving for the first time. And I watched in action how pressure in different parts of the razor while on the hone affects the process. If I wasn't paying attention, I would cut "two bevels" into the razor. It is enough to stop honing, check with the loupe and change grip/place a finger on the tip/forgetting or starting to apply torque and going back to the hone. After a couple of laps, the bevel face is not in one plane. I was also using more pressure than necessary. Lightening up still got the needed work done quite fast. I was also puting most of the pressure near the heel and on the edge of the stone, where the edge would suffer with every lap. After lightening up, refocusing to put the pressure on the center of the stone and keeping the stroke as consistent as I could - voila - shaving arm hair like nothing, no reflections from the edge looking straight down with a loupe. So I made sure the bevel is in one plane across the whole face, studying how the scratches reflect light. Then polished on 5k, 8k and 0.5um diamond balsa. The 8k was getting sticky on the side with a wider bevel face. The other side could have used some more work on the diamond plate, but I did just enough to meet and intersect the bevel planes, albeit with one side having a wider bevel face. No matter, the other side made perfect contact at the edge as well. Still not a perfect mirror finnish after 8k or 0.5 um. But that widely depends on ligthning conditions and the angle at which the light hits the steel. At one angle its a mirror and when you turn it a little and the light hits just right - you can clearly make out glints of scrathces. But the important thing I think is that these scratches are uniformly wide/deep and in one direction - with corelation to the stroke orientation which was used on the last abrasive surface. So there are no straight scratches (Which I used from 1k to 8k for the first few laps) visible if I finnished heel leading at about 45° on the balsa. Only 45° scratches visible after that, which should be all well.
So when I finnished this edge and tried shaving, it was my best edge yet. Close and comfy with a single WTG pass.
It's warped, the spine has uneven thickness. It did not lay flat on the hone, one side had the tip raised from the surface of the stone by like 1.5 mm, just a crazy gap. Yes it has a smile, but that was extreme, half the edge was waaay above the stone. So I double taped the edge and worked the spine on the 150 side of the diamond plate. I removed lots of steel and stopped when it wasnt moving the edge towards the stone anymore. So I smoothed it out a little on the 600 side, did some work on the other side to kind of match the sides.
It did require quite a profound rolling stroke on the 1k, but I managed to hone it to a nice shaver.
I set a bevel on the 1k worthy of shaving for the first time. And I watched in action how pressure in different parts of the razor while on the hone affects the process. If I wasn't paying attention, I would cut "two bevels" into the razor. It is enough to stop honing, check with the loupe and change grip/place a finger on the tip/forgetting or starting to apply torque and going back to the hone. After a couple of laps, the bevel face is not in one plane. I was also using more pressure than necessary. Lightening up still got the needed work done quite fast. I was also puting most of the pressure near the heel and on the edge of the stone, where the edge would suffer with every lap. After lightening up, refocusing to put the pressure on the center of the stone and keeping the stroke as consistent as I could - voila - shaving arm hair like nothing, no reflections from the edge looking straight down with a loupe. So I made sure the bevel is in one plane across the whole face, studying how the scratches reflect light. Then polished on 5k, 8k and 0.5um diamond balsa. The 8k was getting sticky on the side with a wider bevel face. The other side could have used some more work on the diamond plate, but I did just enough to meet and intersect the bevel planes, albeit with one side having a wider bevel face. No matter, the other side made perfect contact at the edge as well. Still not a perfect mirror finnish after 8k or 0.5 um. But that widely depends on ligthning conditions and the angle at which the light hits the steel. At one angle its a mirror and when you turn it a little and the light hits just right - you can clearly make out glints of scrathces. But the important thing I think is that these scratches are uniformly wide/deep and in one direction - with corelation to the stroke orientation which was used on the last abrasive surface. So there are no straight scratches (Which I used from 1k to 8k for the first few laps) visible if I finnished heel leading at about 45° on the balsa. Only 45° scratches visible after that, which should be all well.
So when I finnished this edge and tried shaving, it was my best edge yet. Close and comfy with a single WTG pass.