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Initial Blade Evaluation

I was wondering what kind of initial evaluations many experienced honers make on a recently purchased blade whether its new or vintage. Things like spine thickness heal to toe, blade wobble, initial sharpie tests, & so on. And how do these first observations influence your honing approach? For example ,"should I use a wide flat hone or a narrow hone"? Are there certain indicators that a blade might have a tendency to prematurely developed frowns or any other honing concern?
 
I almost always calculate the bevel angle. The only time I don't is when I'm honlng someone else's razor and sense that hone wear would not be acceptable regardless of angle.
 
Sanitize any blade that I work on

Take a peek with loupe. Want to see if there are any chips, cracks, etc

If no excessive wear I kill the edge and hone provided I know what the original size of the razor was. For example, if I get a fili 14 that measures 6/8 without any hone wear I know the angle is going to be way off.

If there appears to be significant wear then calculate the angle.




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I've got barbeside as well and I kind if wish this was mentioned more on the forum. I just picked up a couple of vintage blades with virtually no spine wear so I took a lot of spine width measurements, calculated the bevel angle, looked for asymmetry where the spine tapers down at the shank, and checked for heal to toe spine flatness on both sides by laying them on a reliable straight edge while holding it up to a strong light source. I'm trying to up my inspection game a lot I guess. I won't get into the specifics of what I found on them but doing a preliminary geometry evaluation was extremely informative and I have some very specific ideas about how I'm going to hone them based on the gathered info.
 
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