A week or so ago I found a beaten up old stub tail wedge in a second hand shop. The horn scales were somewhat f-ed so I had to re-imagine them, but it was only $12, and a fun project.
It'd had some significant wear previously, but honing it up went pretty well nevertheless; the majority of the edge is very good, and shaved nicely, but I need to go back and focus on the curve at the tip a bit more. I did the early parts bench-honing, as you do I believe, and it struck me that honing a wedge is in some ways a lot easier and more comparable to knife sharpening than honing hollow ground razors.
As I understand it; the reason you can't use significant pressure when honing a hollow ground razor is because of the blade flexing, meaning that you wouldn't be hitting the very apex or bevel. This would be analogous to sharpening a knife at too low an angle, we'd call it sharpening the shoulders, or 'easing' them if you're doing it intentionally.
But with a near wedge that's not really a problem. I imagine I could have honed the thing very happily just on the Charnley I used to finish, by altering pressure. And it wouldn't have taken very long - if you can apply a decent amount of pressure on any of these razor finishing stones then they will happily set bevels or raise burrs on hard steel.
It would also probably open up the possibility of a more intricate and nuanced use 'hamaguri' sharpening. Which is probably quite a big topic in itself, but in some ways might be comparable to what people call 'torqueing'.
Are there any flaws in this thinking? Or drawbacks?
It'd had some significant wear previously, but honing it up went pretty well nevertheless; the majority of the edge is very good, and shaved nicely, but I need to go back and focus on the curve at the tip a bit more. I did the early parts bench-honing, as you do I believe, and it struck me that honing a wedge is in some ways a lot easier and more comparable to knife sharpening than honing hollow ground razors.
As I understand it; the reason you can't use significant pressure when honing a hollow ground razor is because of the blade flexing, meaning that you wouldn't be hitting the very apex or bevel. This would be analogous to sharpening a knife at too low an angle, we'd call it sharpening the shoulders, or 'easing' them if you're doing it intentionally.
But with a near wedge that's not really a problem. I imagine I could have honed the thing very happily just on the Charnley I used to finish, by altering pressure. And it wouldn't have taken very long - if you can apply a decent amount of pressure on any of these razor finishing stones then they will happily set bevels or raise burrs on hard steel.
It would also probably open up the possibility of a more intricate and nuanced use 'hamaguri' sharpening. Which is probably quite a big topic in itself, but in some ways might be comparable to what people call 'torqueing'.
Are there any flaws in this thinking? Or drawbacks?