Gold Dollar 1996 razors plated and warped?

[Steve56]

That’s a fair assessment, at least of the wonkier ones. BTW, you are learning valuable skills, also known as corrective honing. While mainstream razors usually won’t exhibit defects of this magnitude, if you hone enough razors you’’ll see the same kind of problems, just not as bad. You use the same techniques that you are now learning to correct all of them.

Get a diamond plate, a 325 DMT is fine. On a Gold Dollar, start by honing the spine at least relatively straight and flat. They vary by vintage and many of the later ones that I’ve worked on are thin in the middle of the spine, so just don’t slide the heel off the hone or you’ll have two bevels on each side.

Once the spine is somewhere near correct, you can reasonably set a bevel depending on how reasonably the specific creature is ground/made.

Just to reiterate, buy a dozen Gold Dollars and you’ll get:

1-3 that just aren’t worth the trouble unless you’re @Slash McCoy and use a belt sander. Even then your funky 13/16 will magically become a perfect 11/16.

1-3 that hone up easily with minimal fuss. I wish that they were all like this but they’d have to throw away 2/3 of their product.

All the rest need some corrective honing.

Keep it up, you’re learning the good stuff - which isn’t always pleasant!

 

[BDF]

Thanks for the advice Steve.

Got a Shapton 500 HR in and it is far, far more aggressive than my Atoma 600. Have not had much of a chance to use it but the couple times I have, it is showing itself to be a very fast cutter. I was on the fence about which grit to get and still think I perhaps should have dropped to a ~200 to ~300 grit stone but this one is a huge improvement over a 1000 grit Naniwa. Not that that is a bad stone, it is just too gentle and slow to remove enough stock.... you know, the first 1/8" to 3/16"

I am sure a big part of my problem is that I am just having trouble believing how much stock removal these things need. In fact, it seems that more than a few modern razors need a lot of geometry correction, or geometry work- arounds to hone them. Having quite a few vintage razors, this is just not a problem as most of them are close to, or very near 'correct' and simply require honing. Not to go too far off- topic but my recent purchase of a Thiers Issard was an even bigger disappointment than the GD's due to their perceived quality level being very high in the first place. GD's are more of a nuisance and annoyance but they are extremely inexpensive so one kinda' has to know how they are going to be even before receiving them.

Again, thanks for the input! I will continue hacking at these things out of sheer tenacity. I now think I have everything I need to teach these twisted, tapered gems a lesson. Other than maybe another few [dozen or hundred] stones and the aforementioned belt sander.

 

[Steve56]

I am sure a big part of my problem is that I am just having trouble believing how much stock removal these things need. In fact, it seems that more than a few modern razors need a lot of geometry correction, or geometry work- arounds to hone them.

Welcome to the club sir, you understand!

 

[BDF]

So I am finally having some success with a Shapton 500. The stone is almost ridiculously aggressive and just what is needed for a GD. I am even thinking of moving to a 220 / 320 grit range to remove material even faster. But I have now established a contiguous plane on each side of the razor reaching from the spine to the edge of the lower bevel. A fair amount of steel removed but not as much as I was thinking was necessary. At a guess, I would say I now have between 1/16" (0.062") and 3/32" (0.09375") wide flat on the spine. Not all that bad really.

As I have mentioned before, I have three ancient GD 66 razors that I had corrected the geometry on but honestly it was so long ago I forgot how much metal had to be ground away to leave something that acted like a razor behind....