Spine Thinning?

[rbscebu]

All honed up to shave-ready using the Method. Tree-tops my chest hair at 10mm to 15mm. That only took about 40 minutes. I must be improving.

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The finished bevel angle is 17.2°. That's a good 1.4° off the original factory-set bevel angle. Now to grow some whiskers for tomorrow's shave. (Where did I put that fresh goat manure and seawater paste?)

 

[Bevel]

A reprofiled heel is the final golden touch when modding a thick spined razor.

That's a sweet looking blade, the heel turned out great.

It only took a few laps on the 400 grit whetstone to remove the scratches from the diamond plates. I then finished the tidying up using a 1k whetstone. The finish is now just like the original, except I now have a thinner spine.

Excellent. It seems to have gone all according to plan which is always a plus.

Rear side is good and face side was honed with the spine lifted. No problem as long as you are aware of it.

Face side honed with the spine lifted? Can this be fixed during bevel set?

Now to set the bevel, refine and finish the edge. If all goes well, I'll be shaving with this SR tomorrow morning.

This should be interesting. Presumably the steel was chosen with the factory bevel angle in mind so I'd be interested to hear how the new angled steel holds up. It's not going to fold but start recording how many shaves it can do compared to an unmodified razor.

 

[Bevel]

View attachment 1460886
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Can you do a side by side with this pic?

 

[rbscebu]

....
Face side honed with the spine lifted? Can this be fixed during bevel set?

This should be interesting. Presumably the steel was chosen with the factory bevel angle in mind so I'd be interested to hear how the new angled steel holds up. It's not going to fold but start recording how many shaves it can do compared to an unmodified razor.

The Sharpie test showed all ink removed from the bevel on the rear side. On the face side, the only ink removed was at the top half of the bevel. This indicates that that bevel was partly formed with the spine lifted off the honing surface. It could also indicate that the final honing of that face bevel was performed with a concave hone. A concave hone is very unlikely as most SR factories hone on a revolving flat grinding disk

The way to handle a double bevel is to just hone through it to form a single bevel.

Edge longevity is of no great concern to me as I maintain on a 0.1μm hanging balsa strop after each shave. The edge only has to remain good for 3 or 4 passes.

One day I might do a comparison as I have two other SRs exactly the same but not thined.

 

[rbscebu]

Can you do a side by side with this pic?

I'll see what I can do tomorrow.

 

[Bevel]

The Sharpie test showed all ink removed from the bevel on the rear side. On the face side, the only ink removed was at the top half of the bevel. This indicates that that bevel was partly formed with the spine lifted off the honing surface. It could also indicate that the final honing of that face bevel was performed with a concave hone. A concave hone is very unlikely as most SR factories hone on a revolving flat grinding disk

The way to handle a double bevel is to just hone through it to form a single bevel.

Convex hone and the spinning disc hones in the factories are also convex.
As you say just plow through the double bevel right to the edge and all's good.

 

[rbscebu]

The shave test this morning went very well. This edge is definitely cutting through my whiskers with less force required. Still not quite as keep as I was expecting. Another full balsa strop progression should sort that out.

What I did notice was that the shave angle needs to be reduced (expected) and greater attention needs to be paid to shave pressure (edge against skin) and stretching.

I would not recommend this SR edge for a n00bie starting out.

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[rbscebu]

After yesterday morning's shave, I put this blade through another full diamond pasted balsa strop progression. This morning I shaved with this SR gain.

There is now certainly some life in the edge. Probably as good as my ¾ Cadman "Bengall" SR's.

Tomorrow morning I will do a side-by-side comparison between this thined SR and a ¾ Bengall.

 

[rbscebu]

As requested by @Bevel, a side-by-side comparison. Left hand side is thinned spine (17.3°) and the right hand side is an unmodified spine (18.3°).

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[rbscebu]

This morning I shaved with two Titan ACRM-2 T.H.60 SRs; one with the thined spine (17.3°, shown on the LHS) and the other was a standard randomly selected out of my stable (18.3°, shown on the RHS).

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First pass was WTG, right face side with 18.3° and left face side with 17.3°. Basically I noticed no difference in either whisker cutter ability nor shave results.

Next was an XTG pass with a fool's pass. RHS with 17.3° and LHS with 18.3°. Again no noticeable difference between the two except in the fool's pass. There I found that the 17.3° required just a little less force to cut the whiskers on my upper lip. The shave result was very similar on both sides of my mustach area.

My final pass was again XTG and no noticeable difference in force required or shave result.

My conclusion so far is the the reduced bevel angle has improved the edge's cutting ability but not be enough to really warrant the effort needed to thin the spine.

This coming week I will try and fit in a comparison between the thined ¾ Titan and a similar ¾ Cadman "Bengall" with about the same bevel angle.

 

[rbscebu]

Just to clean up the spine, I again took this SR to the diamond plates and synthetic whetstones. This greatly reduced the observable spine wear. It was about 2mm to 3mm. Now it is down to well under 1mm. Bevel angle has not changed and still measures in at about 17.3°.

The blade has now been honed a bit more on films and put through yet another full balsa strop progression. It is tree-topping my chest hairs like it's not even touching them. Tomorrow I'll give this edge another shave test.

What I did notice was that if I thin this spine down much more, it will pass straight through the scales. Hadn't previously thought of that. Glad that I stopped where I did.

 

[rbscebu]

A lovely shave with this thinned Titan ACRM-2 T.H.60 this morning. Next I might put a Cnat finish on it and see how it goes.

As this SR is rather unique in my stable, I have a mind to PIF it to a n00bie one day.