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2nd Restor Attempt, Jones MFG Co. and flamed maple

Are you sure the blade rests completely flat on the hone? The razor I have that came with a similar frown is slightly warped. I can set a bevel OK but at higher levels of refinement it becomes apparent tune gen honing. It may be that the frown appeared because of years of uneven honing to compensate for an edge that isn't straight. Try a sharpie test.

Also I find it easier to hold a smaller blade at the wrong angle when shaving, which is most noticeable going atg.
Yeah, I've put this one aside for a while. It just won't hone up corretly and after literally hours and hours of honing I still can't get the edge where it should be. I'll have to come back to it here at some point after a bit, but for right now my Larkin that I restored is shaving very nicely.
 
Ok, so I dug the Jones back out to re-hone it once again. It has by far the nicest looking scales of anything I own and it just seems a shame that I'm not using it. I started on 15u film and I must have done 200-300 laps easily. It seemed like it was able to pop a fair number of hairs on my leg so I went ahead and progressed through. 60 with 5u, 3u, and 1u with another 40 on .3u

It looked good so I shaved with it this morning. My first WTG pass and I was thinking that it just wasn't going to make it...it didn't seem sharp at all...nothing like the Larkin I've been shaving with. However, I kept going. XTG seemed better, still not as sharp as I'd like but it was removing whiskers and painlessly. I figured ATG was going to be a bear, but it also wasn't bad, not perfect, but not bad either. I got done and did a smidge of touch up and I'll be darned if I didn't have a strong DFS to near BBS shave with only slight irritation. Probably even less irritation that I've been getting from my "sharper" blades. Irritation may even be too strong of a word...just a little tingle/sting from the witch hazel/clubman combo splash I use. Enough to let you know you shaved.

I'd really like it to be sharper, but to get this kind of shave with it really surprised me with how the WTG pass started. Anyone else have this experience? Just seemed odd.
 
For me a good wtg pass feels like it didn't cut anything

That's the way my Larkin feels...like it isn't doing anything...and it's SHARP...this Jones felt like it's pulling WTG like it's way too dull to do any good, but it actually performed well. I was shocked.
 
After making a set of bone scales for and modding a GD66 then getting a pearl king on the bay and honing it up to shave ready, I went back to pick up this Jones razor and see why I hadn't been able to get it going yet while all of these others were working for me.

I did another couple hundred laps with some pressure on 15u and 12u and it seemed like it was getting there...it was finally able to pop some hairs off of the 15u showing me the bevel was set. Problem was though that the bevel wasn't really set for the last 1/2" of the toe, so I kept working on it and focusing on the toe until it finally seemed to come around.

I was in a bit of a hurry after that, and did a quick 30-40laps on 5u, 3u, and 1u film. I didn't even have time to hit the .3u but did do about 25 laps on my CrO balsa strop.
After a shower I lathered quickly and did a quick WTG pass thinking I would end there. I went ahead and did an XTG/ATG combo pass and had no irritation...a little minor sting with AS but was a DFS+ solid shave

In looking at the edge after all this it is clear that some of the edge didn't get polished up on the finer films and I needs a bit more attention, but I think I'm finally there on this one.

Took forever to get there but it feels good to finally make it happen...I was tempted to sell it if I couldn't get it going
 
I guess I spoke too soon...I went back to 5u-1u and it was actually worse than before... I don't get it at all.

I don't know if I used too much pressure to try and get the one inch section by the heel on one side polished up or what, but it got worse with each finer film. I'm gonna have to go back to the 15u and 12u and do it again I guess. This blade has been the most frustrating of anything I've honed...I just CANNOT figure this one out.

I shaved with it anyway and got some irritation and not nearly as smooth a shave as yesterday...oh well...back to the drawing board.
 
Next attempt was to hit the 15u film again until I had it tree topping hairs on my leg.

Then I taped the spine with one layer and hit the 5u-1u concentrating on the x stoke for the convex side and pulling the heel off the film on the concave side. The frown this blade had at the start and the apparent warp it had that caused the frown have been the issue all along.

The tape and the concentrated strokes seem to be helping. I may get a shavable edge on this thing before I retire lol
 
Just did a WTG pass because I still had so much irritation from yesterday. I'm usually an every other day face shaver, so 3 days in a row with day 2 being a fair amount of irritation was a bit much.

It seemed like it was cutting smooth and was sharp. I'll have to see in the morning with a full shave, but after 30 laps on balsa and 50 on leather it was much better than I've ever seen it on my leg hair, popping lots of hairs...I hardly have any arm hair left from honing so much lately lol
 
Even on the 4th day in a row Tuesday I had a close comfy DFS 2 pass shave. I think even though I cheated with tape creating a sort of micro bevel it finally worked. This is the first time it has been what I would consider "shave ready" at least for my face anyway.

Used my GD66 in bone scales this morning and had a no irritation DFS+ and I think the Jones might even be a bit sharper...FINALLY!!!
 
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