Honing help!

[Nick Gentry]

Hey guys I'm new to the hobby/obsession of straights. I have a Norton 4k/8k and a strop and have made a few blades shave able but not great. I had a blade that was shaveable and worked it with the 8k some more and it is dull as a spoon. This happened to other blades that were sharp but not shave sharp. While looking and feeling the edge it seems I unevenly honed and therefore made more of a right triangle angle rather than an isosceles triangle angle. How do I remedy this? Start with low grit and reset bevel or hone just the other side? Or some other trick?

Help!

Nick

 

[buca3152]

The angle is determined by the spine. The spine and edge are always on the hone. You may have to roll the edge as some edges wont sit flat on the hone. I would mark the bevel with a black magic marker and take 5 laps on your hone and see how much black is remaining.This will tell you where the hone is making contact and where its not.

 

[Nick Gentry]

The angle is determined by the spine. The spine and edge are always on the hone. You may have to roll the edge as some edges wont sit flat on the hone. I would mark the bevel with a black magic marker and take 5 laps on your hone and see how much black is remaining.This will tell you where the hone is making contact and where its not.

Any other ideas what could have happened? This has never happened to me before BUT I wasn't sitting at my normal honing spot so I wonder if changing position made me out uneven pressure?

Thanks

 

[Steve56]

Hard to say without more information, but I'd try changing the stroke. If you're using straight strokes, try ellipses. Usually I find myself using lighter pressure with ellipses but YMMV. Too much pressure can flex and distort the edge, so maybe lighten up a bit.

Make sure the razor is flat on the stone and you're not rocking the edge at the end of the stroke, same for for stropping.

The edge of a razor is very delicate and it takes surprisingly little to affect it. Coming from knife sharpening, I marveled that razor honers used hones FAR more coarse than I did. If you want to remove material from a knife, you can push harder on the stone, but if you do that with a razor the edge will distort. So you have to use a coarser stone with light pressure to remove material or be extremely patient.

If you're not using a magnifying glass, get one and use it before and after every honing step. Look at the edge under a bare bulb rotating the blade so that light will glint off any blemish on the actual cutting edge, not up on the side of the bevel, though you need to look at the bevel to be sure the last hone marks are uniform along the entire bevel.

Nothing wrong with going back to 4k, it should be a great bevel refresher. Just keep the pressure light.

Cheers, Steve

 

[Gamma]

Killing the edge on an 8k is easy if the stone wasn't lapped flat or you used too much pressure.