I had one of those "what the hell" moments & ordered a GD off eBay for about three bucks. My plan is to try my hand at rescaling it before having it honed. Since I have neither the experience nor the equipment to hone it myself, I was wondering if anyone has ever sent one out to be professionally honed and had them reply back with "this is job gonna cost you extra". I'm just looking for a quick & fun project here. Thanks!
Professionally Hone a GD?
- Thread starter JonM
- Start date
I wouldnt think so, I took mine into my local B&M and they knocked it out for a regular rate ($10).
GDs often need more than just a hone to get going. The heel needs reprofiling generally, which will cost you extra
This
- Thread starter
- #5
Oh boy. What have I gotten myself into? 
GD need some heel grinding in my experience.
A GD only costs 3 dollars if you have the tools and stones. Otherwise the first one will end up costing the price of a Dremel clone and hones/film.
Slash McCoy
I freehand dog rockets
You can often hone a GD by simply ignoring the heel area altogether but that is sloppy and stopgap. I would grind out the heel and fair the blade into the shank, so you have a shoulderless razor. You can do this with the Dremel and the sanding drum attachment. Don't use the stone attachments. They tend to skitter all over the hard steel. Also in areas where the steel is thin, it can overheat in just 3 or 4 seconds. If you ever see the steel change color, you have pulled the temper, at least from that area. That part will no longer hold an edge. Anyway, in for a dime, in for a dollar. If you remove the heel, you may as well also thin down the spine. The exact spine width desired will depend on the blade width, because you want the bevel angle to be within the optimum range. So before that, you should breadknife the edge to straighten it out nice, then measure the distance between the thickest part of the spine and the edge, then calculate the spine thickness you need for a bevel angle of 16-1/2 degrees. After preliminary bevel setting on a diamond plate, check it again, re-calculate, and thin the spine more if needed. You will need to thin the shank down too, so that the spine is slightly thicker than the shank in the shoulder area, to avoid a step-up there when honing. Add a barber notch if desired, or reprofile the nose to your taste. Shape the spine if you don't want those big honed flats on the spine. Sand and polish, then re-scale, then hone, and you have a very very nice razor if you did everything right.
These razors are cheap enough to not worry about destroying a few. But you should order another dozen or so, so that you CAN destroy a few and still have working material. Because of the low price, I think they are excellent for a totally clueless newbie to try his hand on. Get your equipment and get a whole bunch of GD#66's, and post. Somebody will walk you through the process, and if you persevere and follow instructions well and remove the phrase, "good enough" from your vocabulary, you will end up with something magical. If not, well, it will keep you out of the bars for a while.
WEAR EYE PROTECTION WHEN USING POWER TOOLS! Either that, or make sure you have some really funny famous last words of the recently blinded, to post here with your braille keyboard.
These razors are cheap enough to not worry about destroying a few. But you should order another dozen or so, so that you CAN destroy a few and still have working material. Because of the low price, I think they are excellent for a totally clueless newbie to try his hand on. Get your equipment and get a whole bunch of GD#66's, and post. Somebody will walk you through the process, and if you persevere and follow instructions well and remove the phrase, "good enough" from your vocabulary, you will end up with something magical. If not, well, it will keep you out of the bars for a while.
WEAR EYE PROTECTION WHEN USING POWER TOOLS! Either that, or make sure you have some really funny famous last words of the recently blinded, to post here with your braille keyboard.
- Thread starter
- #10
Thanks guys. I was already planning on getting a Dremel anyway. So as far as that goes, I don't consider it to be an added cost to the project. Thanks for the advice!
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Harbor Freight clones start at $10 with the attachments
Send it to me, simply pay for the postage and I'll hone up that bad mamma jammah.
Slash McCoy
I freehand dog rockets
Get the heavy duty one. You will be glad you did. The little one with the "wall wart" DC power supply doesn't have enough torque. The big one is a beast that doesn't give up.
Nice.
- Thread starter
- #16
Wow! That's very generous of you. I'll let you know when it arrives. I really appreciate your help. Thank you very much!
The generosity of B&B's members never fails to amaze me. I'll be sure to return the favor.
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Actually, having done it a couple times before, I've no problem honing a Gold Dollar with the monstrous stabilizer intact. I still manage to get the entire heel just as sharp as the rest of the razor. The same goes for pocket knives, which have heels that often are slightly recessed from the tang. You have to be careful not to let the stabilizer gouge the edge of the hone, but that's the only caveat I've encountered concerning a GD's heel. Besides, you're trying to abrade the bevel and the spine, not the tang.
The only substantial issue I've encountered with Gold Dollars is that the bevel is usually very uneven. The bevel angle and curvature of the blade typically need reprofiling.
+1,000,000. I recently had a revelation regarding this when a dremel cutting disc broke while cutting a piece of G10. No injury, but I will not risk it again...could have gone really bad in the fraction of a second.
- Thread starter
- #19
The GD arrived from Hong Kong today. You guys are right about these things. The steel seems pretty decent while the hunks of plastic that pass for scales are just terrible. I was surprised at how easily the GD logo on the blade came off though. A little chrome polish and it was gone. I'll be sending this thing off to be made shave ready. Once I'm sure that it takes a good edge, I'll be tossing those scales for good.
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