Slight Bow in Spine

Can you use the side of a Norton? Never seen one so I don't know if they are homogeneous or not.

The first blade I noticed a bent spine on miked out at 8 thousanths out of true. I tried all the suggestions, a vise, hammering and so on. I finally resorted to wrapping it in sheet aluminum to protect it and slamming it as hard as I could with an 8 pound sledge while resting in on a half inch steel plate resting on the concrete floor of my garage.

All I can say is I didn't break it. When I remeasured it it miked out at 7 thousanths, and I think that was just the error in the measurement.

So I don't recommend trying to straighten it. I am still dumbfounded by those videos at Dovo where they sight down the spine on their new blanks and whack them a couple times with a little hammer on an anvil to "straighten" them. Who do they think they are kidding?

I got all obsessive and started measuring all my razors either with a micrometer or feeler gages. When I realize that I only had two razors that weren't out of true to some extent, and when I realized that I could tell if they were warped by the sound they made on the hone or strop, I got over it, bought a narrower hone and never looked back. The bevels will always be uneven along the length, but they will sharpen up nicely and I can't tell any difference when shaving.

Oddly, I have noticed that most of the warped blades are warped in the same direction, which I figure must be due to most of the grinders being right handed.

danjared said:

A smiling razor will not lay flat on a hone, but this deviance from flat should be the same on both sides.

Click to expand...

Would not the smiling razor lay flat, just that the corners of the smile don't touch the home because of the difference in length? Or is it that the thickness tapers along the spine? I have a wedge with a slight smile enroute so the info would help a bunch.

It sounds like bending and hammering are not going to produce a reliable result.

I don't have any narrow hones. Besides the Norton 4k/8k I've got a more course Norton, it's a 220/1k, and then I have a 12k Naniwa. The 12k is more narrow than the Norton but probably is not the solution at this stage.

I'm thinking that I could to try a couple of things before buying more hones. One thought was to start over. Address the bevel first by trying to find a technique that produces a better, more uniform bevel along the entire edge of both sides. This will likely mean finding two techniques that work, one for the concave side and one for the convex side. If I can do that, in theory, I should be able to go through a progression reproducing the stokes that worked best.

One idea was to try X strokes leading with the heel or tip or potentially putting some pitch (roll) into the stroke. Of course this all theory and by the time I'm done experimenting I may have a blade that is a quarter inch wide!

I suppose that buying a narrow stone would probably help. I've never used a Coticule and I suspect that may add another complexity to the learning curve. I hate the idea of trying to cut the stones that I have. Anyway, this has been an opportunity to try new things and as always, I'm open to suggestion.