Fist Honing Attempt on a Smiling Razor

[rbscebu]

I have only honed up about nine Gold Dollar W59's to my standard of shave-ready and never experienced any spine geometry issues. In all cases I first bread-knife out the smile to a 180° bevel angle. Using tape on the spine, I then hone to remove metal from the edge until the bevel is just about to form. That tape is then removed and the bevel set. All this is done on synthetic stones up to about 8k grit.

With the bevel set, it is then onto the lapping films for bevel refinement before finishing off on diamond pasted balsa stops. The W59 takes a very keen and sharp edge. One was so sharp that it matched or even bettered a Feather DE blade in my shavette. That was probably just a fluke. As I maintain my edges on a hanging 0.1μm diamond pasted balsa stop after each shave, I cannot comment on edge retention.

In all cases I kept the point of the toe pointed. Makes it easier to shave inside ear canals and nostrils .

 

[global_dev]

I have only honed up about nine Gold Dollar W59's to my standard of shave-ready and never experienced any spine geometry issues. In all cases I first bread-knife out the smile to a 180° bevel angle.

this is the geometry issue i am talking about. Not so much about the bevel directly, but about the parallel edge to spine flow.

 

[dabrock]

I have only honed up about nine Gold Dollar W59's to my standard of shave-ready and never experienced any spine geometry issues. In all cases I first bread-knife out the smile to a 180° bevel angle. Using tape on the spine, I then hone to remove metal from the edge until the bevel is just about to form. That tape is then removed and the bevel set. All this is done on synthetic stones up to about 8k grit.

With the bevel set, it is then onto the lapping films for bevel refinement before finishing off on diamond pasted balsa stops. The W59 takes a very keen and sharp edge. One was so sharp that it matched or even bettered a Feather DE blade in my shavette. That was probably just a fluke. As I maintain my edges on a hanging 0.1μm diamond pasted balsa stop after each shave, I cannot comment on edge retention.

In all cases I kept the point of the toe pointed. Makes it easier to shave inside ear canals and nostrils .

I was thinking it could be used to pick my teeth but then I thought better of it!

 

[dabrock]

this is the geometry issue i am talking about. Not so much about the bevel directly, but about the parallel edge to spine flow.

That makes sense.