Sharpeners for Wilkinson 7 Day and Rolls Razor blades

[dietz_james]

I recently bought two used shave sets. A Wilkinson's 7 Day set and a Rolls Razor. The blades are in good condition, but need some sharpening. My question is, is there a good sharpener for the Wilkinson 7 Day and Rolls Razor blades? Maybe something like the old Scott's Ball Bearing sharpener?

The Wilkinson's seem to small to easily do by hand, and the stone in the rolls razor it's not fine enough.

 

[sexy beast]

Where is video on YouTube where Keith Johnson has a method in which he does it.

 

[Slash McCoy]

Just use the stropping handle for the Wilkinson set. Put some kapton tape on it after mounting the blade. Hit your finisher only, and see how it does. YOU NEED A VERY BRIGHT LIGHT AND SOME GOOD MAGNIFYING OPTICS to see when and where you are making contact. It may take some work to get the beaten area going all the way out to the edge. And then, you might still not have an apex. After you see that the bevel facet goes unbroken all the way out to the edge on both sides, examine the edge as it is aimed right at you, rolling it slightly from side to side. You should get zero reflection, no sparkles. Then, take the tape off and strop.

You can also simply push the blade across the hone. Try not to press down on the spine. PUSH it. Use an X stroke and end up with the blade just extending slightly off the right hand edge of the hone so you can grab it with your right hand (hone is in your left hand, of course, and not resting on a bench.) and flip the edge up and over, then scoot the blade back toward you, same way. Flip the blade again and there is one lap. But don't count laps. Look at results, and feel the feedback.If you do hone your Wilkie blades without the stropping handle, you should consider taping the spine as the bevel angle is probably a bit too acute. Don't do it without first measuring and calculating the angle, of course, but keep an open mind.

Once you have your edge, you can either hit the pasted balsa progression or go straight to the leather strop, and I severely recommend you get your hands on a stropping handle if you don't have one. I know of a guy who managed to get an extremely good edge on his, and he proved how good it was by cutting his first two fingers quite deep, as in emergency room deep, blood everywhere deep, stropping by pushing the blade spine first on his regular strop. As for the balsa, I absolutely never put a taped razor on my balsa, and I don't believe that putting a tape-honed razor to any abrasive surface does any good without tape. YMMV, do it like you feel it.

As for the Rolls, you have a very clever and fascinating mechanism for both honing and stropping, built into the case. The problem is, it simply does not work all that well. I didn't say it doesn't work at all, just that it does not work very well. But old junk Rolls sets go for cheap, and if you can get one part in particular from a basket case of a Rolls case, you can make a "Slash Tool" for honing and stropping your Rolls blades on your regular hones and strops.

Rollin' wit da Rolls! A honing solution.

Well, I had a small welding job to take to a guy who does all the machining and welding for my liveaboard sailboat. (I bought a crank online for handcranking the engine, but it was too short to clear a frame and I needed it lengthened so I could use it.) I had just been messing around...

www.badgerandblade.com

 

[Kyle89]

I’ve honed up and used a number of Rolls Razor blades and have had success with it. I hone them by hand through my normal honing progression for my straight razors. I generally don’t hone using tape but with the Rolls blades I like using a layer of electrical tape on the spine and let it hang off the ends to make handling a little easier.
In terms of stropping I replaced the leather in my main Imperial model with a piece of horsehide and I pasted up the backside of the cork strop in my Viscount model with paste and refresh it on that with good success so far.

Those little wedge blades are fantastic shavers and yes they are small, but I’ve never had any close calls handling them and I’ve had quite a few close calls working on straight razors.

What’s your experience with honing? Do you have any supplies?

 

[dietz_james]

I’ve honed up and used a number of Rolls Razor blades and have had success with it. I hone them by hand through my normal honing progression for my straight razors. I generally don’t hone using tape but with the Rolls blades I like using a layer of electrical tape on the spine and let it hang off the ends to make handling a little easier.
In terms of stropping I replaced the leather in my main Imperial model with a piece of horsehide and I pasted up the backside of the cork strop in my Viscount model with paste and refresh it on that with good success so far.

Those little wedge blades are fantastic shavers and yes they are small, but I’ve never had any close calls handling them and I’ve had quite a few close calls working on straight razors.

What’s your experience with honing? Do you have any supplies?

I'm relatively inexperienced. I have a surgical black Arkansas, but I've only sharpened my straight razor once so far.

 

[timwcic]

I tape the wedge blade to a bamboo shish kebab skewer and do normal progression. The skewer helps in control. I do take my time when finishing if using oil. The little suckers do get slippery

 

[Kyle89]

I tape the wedge blade to a bamboo shish kebab skewer and do normal progression. The skewer helps in control. I do take my time when finishing if using oil. The little suckers do get slippery

View attachment 1395047

Exactly! I do the same with tape. Having the wings really does help a ton.

I'm relatively inexperienced. I have a surgical black Arkansas, but I've only sharpened my straight razor once so far.

I'm relatively inexperienced as well as I only started putting steel to stone about a year ago. I found the Rolls blades to be excellent stepping stones because there's a lot less blade to worry about in terms of uniformly setting the bevel and making sure the striations are fully taken out before moving on in the progression. I found moving on to straight razors was more difficult due to working on some uneven ground razors and being inexperienced to work around tricky bevels, but got there eventually. My setup is fairly basic compared to some here as I set my bevels with a Chosera 1k, refine with the Norton 4k/8k (seems to be out of fashion nowadays) and finish on my natural or Naniwa 12k. Down the road I'd love to mess around with an Ark like you have but I need to continue refining my technique with what I have to further maximize what I can get out of each stone before entering the world of Arks.

Let us know how it goes if you decide on tackling these blades at some point. If I could do it, you can do it.

 

[dietz_james]

I tape the wedge blade to a bamboo shish kebab skewer and do normal progression. The skewer helps in control. I do take my time when finishing if using oil. The little suckers do get slippery

View attachment 1395047

I like the idea of the bamboo skewer!

 

[dietz_james]

Exactly! I do the same with tape. Having the wings really does help a ton.


I'm relatively inexperienced as well as I only started putting steel to stone about a year ago. I found the Rolls blades to be excellent stepping stones because there's a lot less blade to worry about in terms of uniformly setting the bevel and making sure the striations are fully taken out before moving on in the progression. I found moving on to straight razors was more difficult due to working on some uneven ground razors and being inexperienced to work around tricky bevels, but got there eventually. My setup is fairly basic compared to some here as I set my bevels with a Chosera 1k, refine with the Norton 4k/8k (seems to be out of fashion nowadays) and finish on my natural or Naniwa 12k. Down the road I'd love to mess around with an Ark like you have but I need to continue refining my technique with what I have to further maximize what I can get out of each stone before entering the world of Arks.

Let us know how it goes if you decide on tackling these blades at some point. If I could do it, you can do it.

Thank you. I'll try to keep you updated, but my time is limited, so this will be a slow project.