A Marke Birko 13/16 Birko Best on the Coticule
And, now I'm off to test the fruits of my labour.
And, now I'm off to test the fruits of my labour.
What did you hone today?
- Thread starter ouch
- Start date
Puma Special #88 5/8 & Bengall 5/8
Waterville 5/8 barbers notch.
DMT 1200 to set the bevel then to the coti to finish.
DMT 1200 to set the bevel then to the coti to finish.
I honed a henkells with lpb on one layer of tape. using dilucot. then i added two layer s of tape . I did 20 laps on a thury, followed by 10 laps on 1.0my,0.25my ti bio paste just 5 laps and 5 laps on crox balsa. the shave was super sharp and smooth. the shave was like a feather blade but not harsh very smooth.
Palmier 14 15/16
Rudolf Schmidt 15/16
DMT600
Shapton Ceramic Pro 1k & 2k
LPB Coticule.
Rudolf Schmidt 15/16
DMT600
Shapton Ceramic Pro 1k & 2k
LPB Coticule.
6/8ths Bengall - coticule
3" Wusthof paring knife - BBW, coticule
3" Wusthof paring knife - BBW, coticule
A Kobar straight. I was photographing it to put on BST and noticed that the edge had a wave in it, so I leveled it out and for kicks honed it start to finish on stones out of my pile of crap. Started on a Norton Coarse/Fine Combo, then to a mystery carborundum hone, then to a Tytex 42 Carborundum, then finished with both sides of my Frictionite 00 (after 16+ hours over the course of several months I have finally finished lapping both sides... this stone is by far, as in dozens of times, the most difficult stone I've EVER lapped. Worse than any natural stone, Arkansas, China Nat, worse than any other barbers hone. No joke 10-40x worse than the next most challenging lapping I've ever done... and it wasn't even in that bad of shape.)
I'll shave tonight and see if doing both sides on the 00 makes a difference (I've tested the edge off just the finer side before).
I'll shave tonight and see if doing both sides on the 00 makes a difference (I've tested the edge off just the finer side before).
I am just curious Ian. Is the Frictionite a two toned hone or all one color? I am asking because the only difference in fine and coarse o al ot of barber hones is how you lap them from one side to another not a difference in grit. Swaty is this way.
And ton stay on track with the thread I honed a Heljestrand Mk6 I received from Telly today on my 6x2 LPB. I can't wait to shave with it.
And ton stay on track with the thread I honed a Heljestrand Mk6 I received from Telly today on my 6x2 LPB. I can't wait to shave with it.
A 5/8 Simmons Barber's Pet and a 6/8 Dubl Duck Special No. 1.
Naniwa 1K SS and a coticule.
Naniwa 1K SS and a coticule.
It's two colored. There's a noticeable difference in feel between the sides. The dark side feels like glass and the light side feels like glass with grease on it. It's REALLY hard. I'm wager it's harder than my Spyderco UF... though I didn't compare them (and haven't lapped the UF yet). It can't be lapped by Corundum or Carborundum sanding belts (At least not Nortons), it destroys the abrasive on the belt because its particles are held in there better than the belts. I had to do the whole thing on my DMT. When I use it, I can't tell if it's doing anything until it starts pushing a film of swarf at around pass 50 or so.
Wow - I don't have half that amount of time invested in lapping my arkansas.
Kudos for keeping at it like that. Now I feel like a wuss for bailing on my ark after the 1.2k.
Kudos for keeping at it like that. Now I feel like a wuss for bailing on my ark after the 1.2k.
BENGALL 5/8 Hand Forged Blue Steel -Hoffritz N.Y. Sheffield - an eBay special I got for $15 shipped. WOrked on this little bugger for over an hour and could not get the center section of the blade sharp! Has a little "frown", so I think that is my problem?
Thanks for the info.
Touched up a new Dovo on my La Veinette.
Slash McCoy
I freehand dog rockets
It's been a busy evening at the hones. Here's what I did:
Gold Dollar 108, 66, 200, 208
Henry Sears & Son 1865 Prussia 3/8
McIntosh Heather 7/16
Landers Frary and Clark 1916 5/8
Prosperity #450 4/8
Allen 5/8 Spanish point
Dovo Best 5/8
Presto "Devil" 9/16
Morgan Cutlery Works "Barbers Special" 9/16
Union Cutlery Co "Spike" 4/8
New stock Boker King Cutter 5/8
The King Cutter is my shaver in the morning. Just got it today and it looks good.
Gold Dollar 108, 66, 200, 208
Henry Sears & Son 1865 Prussia 3/8
McIntosh Heather 7/16
Landers Frary and Clark 1916 5/8
Prosperity #450 4/8
Allen 5/8 Spanish point
Dovo Best 5/8
Presto "Devil" 9/16
Morgan Cutlery Works "Barbers Special" 9/16
Union Cutlery Co "Spike" 4/8
New stock Boker King Cutter 5/8
The King Cutter is my shaver in the morning. Just got it today and it looks good.
Slash McCoy
I freehand dog rockets
BENGALL 5/8 Hand Forged Blue Steel -Hoffritz N.Y. Sheffield - an eBay special I got for $15 shipped. WOrked on this little bugger for over an hour and could not get the center section of the blade sharp! Has a little "frown", so I think that is my problem?
Breadknife the frown out, then set your bevel and proceed as normal. Don't tape, whatever you do! When you take that much off the edge, you HAVE to take approx 1/4 the same amount from the spine, or you are increasing your bevel angle! No razor should take an hour to hone. I have done ebay specials in 10 minutes, a half hour if breadknifing is required. Those ebay specials can be a lot of fun to bring back to life, but you got to be a little more aggro with one of them than with a new razor. A smiley you can maybe live with, but a frownie really needs to be straightened out before you can hone it properly.
Thanks Slash. I did tape the edge (I'm just learning to hone, which is why I am working on an inexpensive eBay find).
What does "Breadknife" mean in honing?
What does "Breadknife" mean in honing?
Slash McCoy
I freehand dog rockets
It means doing exactly the opposite of what you have learned about honing so far. When you have a lot of damage to a blade or it is a frownie or a severe smiley or even a mild smiler and you just don't like smiley razors, you take your blade perpendicular (as if you were sawing your stone in two) to the surface of a stone and work the edge so you get a true straight line for an edge. You keep going until you see that there is a flat where a sharp edge should be, running from one end to the other, unbroken. This flat does not have to be wide but it does have to incorporate the exact center plane of the blade. You would use a very coarse stone for this, usually a fairly cheap one at least for the majority of the breadknifing operation.
After you have a proper breadknifed edge, you set a bevel as before. Breadknifing can be used to remove a fairly small amount of steel, or with an edge severely damaged it can be used to remove quite a lot of steel. I have taken as much as 3/16" from a blade to end up with a usable razor. It gives you a little more precision in setting a true edge and saves a lot of time. You still have to remove the same amount of steel if you grind away using conventional flat honing but this works better.
If your breadknifing stone is reasonably flat and true you can begin the beveling operation on it. At any rate you want a fast cutter for the initial beveling. You will have just finished putting a flat where the edge should be, and now you want to make that flat completely disappear. Moderate pressure is okay until you get close to having an edge again. This is not a time for diddling around with cute little alternating x strokes... I use a series of 20 or even 50 big circle strokes on one side, then the other, until I can look down the edge and see that the flat has disappeared completely and it doesn't make a reflection any more. It is important during this stage that the spine be untaped. When you remove width from the blade, you must also remove thickness proportionally from the spine, or else you are making a higher bevel angle and losing the potential keenness of the blade. This is also where you must address any issues with intrusive stabilizers or shoulders that prevent the blade from laying flat against the hone. Often a stabilizer is not a problem until you have to take 1/8" from the blade to get past damage. An intruding shoulder will force more cutting action to the tip, ruining the symmetry and geometry of your blade. Anyway, continue with sets of big circle strokes and when the flat has disappeared, you should begin to be able to feel a burr on the side away from the one just honed. Then when you hone the burred side, you should feel the burr form on the other side. When you feel the burr finally extending the full length of the edge, you have successfully rough-set your bevel. By the burr stage, you should have reduced your pressure to a normal very light pressure. Recovering a bevel from a breadknifed razor is the only time you should use a heavy hand because it deforms the flexible blade and the resulting bevel will not be true.
Once your bevel is rough-set and you have progressed to alternating strokes, start progressing through your stones to your higher grits. From here on, you are just honing another razor. Finish as you normally do, whether it is on a coti or other finisher, or on pasted paddles. Strop and shave!
There is an irrational resistance in many honers to honing away at the spine. "hone damage" to the spine is merely a logical result of honing the blade in general. What happens if you keep honing the edge and it wears away but there is no wear to the spine? Eventually you would end up with a wedge that you could split kindling with! (don't try that... i'm just making a point!) Taping does have its place, such as when you are honing a showpiece and you want a pristine spine, or maybe when honing a full wedge. Normally, unless for some reason you think the bevel angle is too small, you should not tape.
Ebay specials are great for practicing breadknifing, not because you might ruin a good razor but because you are less afraid of doing so. Fear of ruining a blade will slow you down, as it probably should, but breadknifing is an intense and extreme technique most efficiently performed charging into it like a bull and not slinking in like a fox. Once you have taken a few seemingly impossible razors from totally useless to perfectly functional, you will have the confidence to take on a potentially more valuable razor.
Breadknifing is not workable on all blades. Notice on many hollow ground blades that there is a distinct backbone right behind the edge, where the blade actually thickens slightly coming out of the hollow grind. Losing this backbone changes the characteristics of the blade considerably. If you got to do it, you got to do it, but understand that your results might not be as good as on some other blades. Also there are those pesky stabilizers which can intrude into the bevel plane when you have removed a lot of steel. There is also a practical limit on how narrow you can make a blade and still have a good shaver. The geometry of the blade is a limiting factor. You want to end up (generally and roughly) with a blade having a spine thickness 1/4 of the blade width. This ratio varies slightly with different makers and different steels and styles but it is going to be fairly close to that for an optimum shaving bevel. If the spine has become too thin, you might want to tape during the rough bevel to let it catch up. If it is too thick, you could apply pressure to the spine during initial beveling but usually it will catch up on its own if you simply don't tape. I suppose in theory you could actually tape the edge to force disproportionate hone wear onto the spine, but I have never found it necessary, so far.
Breadknifing is an extreme technique and once again it is not a magic bullet that will enable you to recover every single blade you come across. But it is a valuable tool for use when a blade is not usable otherwise.
Making a smiling razor completely straight causes unnecessary wear and damage to the center portion of the spine. I don't see why anyone would advocate it, especially to the uninitiated. If you don't like smiling razors or are unwilling to hone them properly, please leave them unscathed for someone else to handle.
Also, honing with tape is not all bad like you make it out to be. As with many other things, it must be used judiciously. Blinding adhering to or avoiding anything rarely opens new doors. Believe it or not, taping isn't just for making microbevels or protecting the spine. It is often for maintaining the geometry of a razor, as using pressure when honing will cause the spine to wear faster than the bevel. The spine is often less hardened than the bevel, and the greatest pressure is applied to the spine anyway. Where do you use the most pressure? On low grit stones when fixing a damaged bevel.
Slash McCoy
I freehand dog rockets
The "uninitiated" is exactly the one who benefits most from a straight edge. It takes a knowing and experienced, and meticulous hand to hone a smiley properly. Not everyone can do it and get good, professional quality results. Not everyone wants to pay $15 or $20 plus shipping to have someone else do it every time it needs honing. We are talking about an ebay special, after all.
Unnecessary wear to the center portion of the spine? Possible if the razor was made to smile, i.e. if the spine itself has a pronounced curve. Otherwise metal being removed from the central portion of the spine is just catching up to the excessive wear to the heel and point that caused the present resulting smile.
A showpiece smiley that was intended to be a smiley should certainly be retained as a smiley, or passed on to an admirer of that type of razor who can give the smiling edge the attention and care it deserves. But a smiley that is only a smiley because of 3 generations of careless honing is a different breed of cat altogether, nearly in the same category as a frownie.
And I did point out that taping can be used to maintain or modify the geometry of the blade. I simply wish to discourage the practice of automatically taping to prevent "hone damage to the spine" without thinking about what is actually going on with the bevel. I see far too much of this. And if there is a choice between always taping and never taping, then far, far less damage is done by never taping than always taping. A thinking person will think about it anyway, given the knowledge that it isn't generally necessary. An inexperienced honer is more concerned with following the right steps than analyzing all the details. If he isn't considering all the factors and hasn't seen a reason to tape, then he shouldn't tape. Period. In the long run he will get better results, and that's what counts.
Similar threads
