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How long does it take to set the bevel

Never used sandpaper either, but like honing in general it is going to depend on the grind of the razor, steel, chip removal, etc.
 

Legion

Staff member
Wet the back and stick it to a flat surface? Works great.

I'm interested to hear how well this works too. If lapping films work for polishing, why not wet/dry for setting a bevel?

People do do it. I have never tried. I was thinking about it when I first started out, but was advised against it. There are synthetic stones in the 800 - 1k range which are pretty inexpensive. Get yourself one of those.

How long would it take to do if you had to? On 1000 grit paper, probably about thirty laps. But that is just a guess.
 
Time it takes to "set" a bevel depends on the amount of work that needs to be done. A bevel of an Ebay razor thar hasn't been used for shaving in decades, can be very far off. While the bevel of a razor that just started to deteriorate from normal use, can show only a bit of minor micro damage at the very tip. The former can require 20 times more work than the latter.

I occasionally reset the bevels on the 2 razors from a person who maintains them with a pasted strop. He brings them in about every 8 months or so. The bevels on those razors are heavily convexed. Also that requires a fair amount of work.

The trick I use is this: I run the razor once, edge down, over a glass object (a beer bottle or so). That renders the very edge just below a keenness to shave my arm hair. Because a convex bevel doesn't make contact with the surface of a hone at its very tip, the razor can not regain any keennes before the bevel is fully flattened and developed. As soon as the razor starts to shave my arm hair again (I check along the entire edge), there is no doubt that the bevel is ready for the actual honing part of the sharpening job.

Even on 600 or 1000 grit sandpaper, a completed bevel will shave arm hair. A pitfall when using sandpaper, is that the paper can start to bead up in front of the edge. That kills all chances on success. The most secure method is to spray glue the sandpaper to a flat piece of wood, so that it resembles a sharpening stone. Chamfer the sides of the wood. That prevents the razor's edge from catching the edges of the "hone".
If you're going to do this regularly, you'll end up buying a dedicated hone for that purpose. You'll regret the time you postponed doing so.:wink2:

Kind regards,
Bart
 
Sorry guys I should have been more specific.

Let's say I'm talking about a wedge with no chips or frowns.
 
sorry for reviving an old thread, but i have a question about setting the bevel with sandpaper. Does the edge goes to the side im moving towards? like it would on a waterstone?
 
sorry for reviving an old thread, but i have a question about setting the bevel with sandpaper. Does the edge goes to the side im moving towards? like it would on a waterstone?

Basically thats the rule of thumb but it's not set in stone, you can do circle motions if you want.

Basically treat the sandpaper the same as you would a hone or waterstone. I've used sandpaper in a pinch, basically just folded it over another stone so it was basically the same shape and feel as honing on that stone.
 
right now i own one hone, a belgian blue + yellow/white coticule combo. I need to set the bevel on a razor . I read you can do it with sandpaper but theres the problem with double bevel' which i would like to avoid. my razor has small but visible chips so was going to start on 1k grit sandpaper, then 2k grit snadpaper, then BWW and finishing with the coticule.

I was thinking on not using tape for the sandpaper, and using electrical tape on the stones. to avoid doble bevel. what do you think?
 
The trick I use is this: I run the razor once, edge down, over a glass object (a beer bottle or so). That renders the very edge just below a keenness to shave my arm hair. Because a convex bevel doesn't make contact with the surface of a hone at its very tip, the razor can not regain any keennes before the bevel is fully flattened and developed. As soon as the razor starts to shave my arm hair again (I check along the entire edge), there is no doubt that the bevel is ready for the actual honing part of the sharpening job.

I do not want to hijack this thread but I would like to comment on Bart's trick because I happen to have used it after having set the bevel on a DMT1200 and prior to honing on a BBW, and the preliminary results are promising. Previously, I have had shave ready razors which would give a DFS on the test shave but that felt very rough on my face. Bart suggested that it may be because the rough DMT1200 edge may have survived through the honing on the slow BBW stone thus explaining the rough feeling. On the last two razors I have honed I used the beer bottle trick which resulted in a much smoother feeling on the face whilst test shaving. Thanks, Bart! I still think the leap from DMT 1200 to BBW is a bit drastic but until I can fetch my coticule, I will make do with this setup.
 
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