Advice on restoring a Dovo Inox

Hi, newbie here, been shaving with a DE for some years now, and finally got my hands on an old straight
since where i live they are pretty hard to come by I guess this is a pretty decent find.

here's an album with all the pics http://imgur.com/a/qr2iq is a Dovo, and since i dont know much about Straight razors, some one told me that most old german one were good i went with this one, it lookd to be in pretty decent state, nno scratches or cracks, but the edge needs a lot of work.


if you see the album, theres a pic of the 2 stones i have ( i had them for my knives), the little one i think is a nagura.

so as you can see im looking to restore it for my personal use, and i dont have the option of sending it to get restored/honed, and after lurking the forum for a while im kind of overwhelmed with information.

so any advice is more then welcome, while i resist the urge to go give it some pases on the 1k stone

The razor looks great! No real need to restore. Just get it honed by someone who knows what they are doing.

It looks a bit around 4/8-5/8 so it should be nice and nimble.

good to hear its not too bad
id love to send it for honing, but i cant, im way down south of the world so its pretty much up to me
i was thinking of smoothing it out with some sand paper around 360 grit maybe and then going at it with the 1k till i get to the 6k

Where is this way south?

Your pic shows a king 1k and 6k stone and a synthetic nagura which I think is for cleaning the stone, not honing. Don't use 360, it's too low.

Without other stones, You could probably use the 1k to make sure the bevel is set and then see if the jump to 6k gets you to a serviceable shave edge, it might take a while. Not sure that's even good advice but maybe the 6 can wipe away the results of the 1k.

You would need a strop too.

But honestly my best advice would be to go slow And try not kill the spine or edge with your first attempts.

Not knowing how to shave or hone is typically a recipe not for success especially with just 2 stones, but you never know.

Good luck. If you had access to other hones it might be a lot easier .

I live in Chile, so im as south as it gets, great place to live but hard to get some stuff.

I'm getting a 4k/8k stone in a couple of days so i guess itll be more gradual

what worries me the most is how to get rid of the micro teeth/chips



i think this pic shows them better, they are on the bevel (teeth)
so should i just star setting the bevel on 1k as is... im seeing a lot of ppl put electrical tape on the spine so i guess i can do that at least for the 1k
ima go give it a try

Those nicks on the edge will come out as you set the bevel on the 1k. You should use definitely use tape and change frequently as it wears through until you get close to having bevel set. Once its set with tape, it's easier to not use tape to reset the angle of the bevel without a ton of accidenral honewear.

You mentioned getting a 4/8K stone.
If it is the Norton, one thing to note is that they use a different grit system and the Norton 8K (3 microns) is a lot coarser than the King 6K (2 microns). So the progression is 1K king, 4k norton, 8k norton, 6k king.
Some people shave on 3 micron edge, but most find that too rough. Stropping soften that, but without abrasive paste, it would take forever to smooth a 3 micron edge.
For abrasive, chromium Oxide is commonly used. It has a 0.5 micron part size.
I have recently read about someone using house cleaning product and tooth paste. If you can not get some CrOx, it might be worthwhile to look into it.

Now, with all that said, what really make of break the edge is the bevel. It takes a lot longer than one would expect and most of the work is there. It sometimes takes me over an hour to get to the bevel, the rest is a few minutes.

Make sure to test the bevel on the full blade length. The easiest test it to try to gently shave hair on arm or leg. Bevel is set when it cuts hair at the root effortlessly.
Once you have that AND the blade has a clean straight line edge (no micro-chips) then you can move.
You can get some cheap $6 x100 magnification on ebay. They come from China, so I think the shipping is worldwide.
I highly recommend getting one to monitor the edge during the honing and of course making sure your edge is without chips too small to be seen with magnification.

yeah the stone is the norton 4k/8k , good to know
about the stropping, i have a fromm strop and it came with a bottle of strop dressing (white bottle that says 1907), havent used it yet
and luckily y have a nice magnifying glass to check on the blade, but im slowly working on the 1k to set the bevel still

Good luck with the project.