I'm looking to you experts for advice on a honing issue I seem to be having. No matter what blade or grind I'm honing, the heels of the blades seem to lag significantly behind the toe and mid-blade areas. I don't want to give out too much info here, because I want a variety of thoughts. Here's what I will divulge. Problem seems to happen with taped or untaped blades, x strokes or straight strokes, wedges or hollows, smiles, frowns or neutral edges. I use Norton 4/8k, lapping films, 1k and 6k Kings and a C12k (not on every edge of course). Even tried Dilucot on the 4k side of the Norton. I kinda have an idea where my problem may lie, but don't want to influence the jury. Stoned are lapped frequently.
Heel problems
- Thread starter Tolduonce
- Start date
I often have the same problem. What I typically do is use a sharpie and mark the entire edge to see how the blade is behaving. If after a few regular x-strokes, I notice spots where the marker is still there then I'll try to modify my stroke accordingly. I also use the TPT test to then see how the entire edge is coming along (ie. whether the heel, middle and toe are getting the same treatment and sharpening evenly.
Just a thought.... I'm guessing you might need more accentuation on the "rolling' part of the rolling x stroke at the heel area.
I think you may simply be inadvertantly lifting the heel as you hone. On many vintage razors you often see accentuated toe wear, and alomost never the reverse. Lifting the heel, or not balancing out the use of an X stroke (I personally never use an X stroke) would both lead to less honing of the heel compared to the rest of the blade.
Or maybe it's a Gold Dollar with the nightmarish heel issues those come with!
Or maybe it's a Gold Dollar with the nightmarish heel issues those come with!
Or maybe it's a Gold Dollar with the nightmarish heel issues those come with!
Nothing a Dremel can't fix, right !!!
A pretty prolific restorer said he thought heels often had never been set right on vintage razors, and I think hes right. I just started paying alot more attention to the heels, especially when setting the bevel. Its really frustrating when the top 3/4 is honed like you want, and you have to go back down to 1k to get the heel right.
- Thread starter
- #7
Good advice guys. Thanks. My belief is that I lift the heels slightly during honing. They are usually the last areas to get beveled during the bevel setting phase. I'm going to work on how I hold the razor in the future and see if I can't resolve the problem.
Another scenario is that on razors with considerable wear, the stabiliser often lifts the heel off the stone & accentuates the wear towards the toe. These razors will show hone marks on the stabiliser as below.
- Thread starter
- #9
Yep, while I don't hone on the stabilizer, I do frequently clang it lightly on the edge of the stone. I'm getting better at avoiding that though. Somewhere in a different post someone talked about stone height vs arm/elbow/wrist height. I hone while standing over the sink. Needless to say, the stone is the low point in the aforementioned alignment. This arangement probably causes a toe down, heel up configuration. Next time, I'll sit and try to get the variables closer to the same horizontal plane. Thanks guys.
