Testing out Five Gold Dollar 66's purchased for <$5/each

[SliceOfLife]

I tend to notice a big dropoff in performance once they get over 17, 17.25 or so. My favorites tend towards 14-15. That said. For $5, beggars can’t be choosers.


I wonder if it might be feasible on these to remove the scales, wrap the edge, and take 1-1.5 mm off the spine and tang (which is a bit fat) somehow.

 

[SliceOfLife]

You won't see any Swedish, German, French, or American made razors with a bevel angle that heavy. Or Japanese.

And honestly, I think a LOT of the British Beefy Boys are weighted falsely high angled because of unscrupulous restorers. I got into arguments with guys back in the day who would buff up and grind chips out of Sheffield choppers and turn 16-19* choppers into 20-25* angle monstrosities because -DE blades are that angle, so it's fine- or other BS justifications. They do avg higher, but I've had plenty in the mid teens, and 20-range is rare on razors that aren't ground back. The difference is big British grinds had enough meat on their bones to let guys butcher them on a grinder/buffer and then cover it up with a polish. Most other regions tended much thinner on avg and you couldn't hack away at a blade like guys do with the Sheffields and get away with it.

 

[Slash McCoy]

I tend to notice a big dropoff in performance once they get over 17, 17.25 or so. My favorites tend towards 14-15. That said. For $5, beggars can’t be choosers.


I wonder if it might be feasible on these to remove the scales, wrap the edge, and take 1-1.5 mm off the spine and tang (which is a bit fat) somehow.

Quite feasible. When I modify a GD, that is the second most important step, after thumbnotching the heel to get rid of stabilizer issues. It is a bit labor intensive but if you are just doing one for yourself or a gift, or doing one for the annual competition, it is quite practical to do so. I typically set a preliminary bevel first, to get a nice straight edge and establish parallelism between edge and spine. Then I "tape" the edge with steel from a food can lid and grind away at the spine, using the protected edge as the guide.

Under 15deg can be pretty dicey. Depends a lot on the steel, if it can carry an edge that fine or not. Usually 16deg is pretty safe and is still good for a very keen edge, with plenty of wiggle room for a compound bevel if desired. I have had a few that were down in the 14.5deg range that were pretty good but mostly I like 16.0deg to 17.0deg.

To me, the big difference can be summed up like this. Under 17 degrees, the razor does all the work. Over 17 degrees, the user does all the work. If that makes sense. at 18 to 20 degrees, I find it an effort. The infamous ZY razors were nearly 20 degrees. The GD66 is currently right around 18 degrees and I am okay with that but prefer the slightly slimmer P81. YMMV. For a beginner, the fatter bevel angle "could" be a plus. A noob will cut himself less, maybe. So for the first dozen shaves or so, yeah maybe a good thing. Kind of like learning to drive in your grandpa's old Buick instead of in your cousin's Lambo. You won't get around quite as fast or stylishly, but you will have fewer accidents.

 

[kcb5150]

And honestly, I think a LOT of the British Beefy Boys are weighted falsely high angled because of unscrupulous restorers. I got into arguments with guys back in the day who would buff up and grind chips out of Sheffield choppers and turn 16-19* choppers into 20-25* angle monstrosities because -DE blades are that angle, so it's fine- or other BS justifications. They do avg higher, but I've had plenty in the mid teens, and 20-range is rare on razors that aren't ground back. The difference is big British grinds had enough meat on their bones to let guys butcher them on a grinder/buffer and then cover it up with a polish. Most other regions tended much thinner on avg and you couldn't hack away at a blade like guys do with the Sheffields and get away with it.

The 1700s stubtails tend to have quite shallow angles and if the steel isn't a pile of rot tend to take absurdly sharp edges.

 

[Steve56]

The 1700s stubtails tend to have quite shallow angles and if the steel isn't a pile of rot tend to take absurdly sharp edges.

I have a Shepherd with a 12.5 degree bevel, I used 4 layers of electrical and 1 layer of Kapton to get it up to 17 degrees. But it had also been reground. Most of the others, a Warburton Lisbon and early 1800s have normal bevel angles, 17-18 degrees.

And yes, the old Sheffield cast steel steel is hard, fine grained, and takes a wonderful edge. Sheffield steel seems to have gotten a lot softer later on.

 

[kcb5150]

Many of mine float in between 15-17. A few are 14ish across a lot of the edge. I tend to never go above 2 layers no matter what on any razor, but what I tend to do with those is cut the tape to sort of a blunt carrot shape so it doesn't ride too far down by the tang and make the razor sit funny.

 

[rbscebu]

To decrease the bevel angle on say a 6/8 SR by 1°, you only need to take about 0.17mm (about 6 or 7 thou) off each side of the spine.

My SR's range from about 16.5° to 18.5° bevel angle. Some have home new with about 19° but that is easily reduced.

For those not into SR shaving, a kitchen knife will normally have a bevel angle of about 40°.

 

[SliceOfLife]

So four of these are being used in an edge test shootout (all GD 66's that round to be fair).

The fifth I've been playing with.

Several shaves off an Ark and then today I tried a more "Ok" edge (A good quality Barber Synth).

These are definitely not shaving as well as a vintage does, and I blame the edge angle. The Ark shaves were pretty good, but nowhere near the screamingly good shaves I usually get off Arks. And then with todays shave it was obvious. I used a finish that gives a quite good shave with a vintage and it was barely passable with this GD... struggling atg, etc.

Definitely going to have to grind these in a bit. Anyone who makes a habit of modding Gold Dollars have any recommendations on the best/fastest/easiest way to take about a quarter mm of each side of the spine? Taping the edge and just grinding on a DMT my best bet?

 

[KW Driver]

Taping the edge and just grinding on a DMT my best bet?

I want to say that's Slash McCoy's recomendation for the easiest technique to simply reset angles without other/complete mods. and play with his bevel angle calulator/formula to see what you have and what you need to take off to get where you want to be.

 

[rbscebu]

What I do is first set the bevel and then measure the bevel angle. If I then want to reduce that angle, I tape the edge and hone the spine equally on each side on a 400 grit synthetic until I'm about halfway down to what I am aiming for. I then switch to 1k synthetic (still with taped edge) and bring it down further to my wanted spine thickness. Over all this might take me about 15 to 30 minutes.

Keep an eye on the tape and replace it when needed. I use a micrometer to measure spine thickness and a vernier calliper to measure blade width.

Remember that the spine thickness (t) is measured at the top of the spine wear and the blade width (w) is measured from the top of the spine wear to the edge. Measure w on both sides and average them. The bevel angle is then calculated by:

Bevel angle = 2 x arcsine (w ÷ (2 x t))

Once done, reset the bevel and progress as normal.

 

[Slash McCoy]

So four of these are being used in an edge test shootout (all GD 66's that round to be fair).

The fifth I've been playing with.

Several shaves off an Ark and then today I tried a more "Ok" edge (A good quality Barber Synth).

These are definitely not shaving as well as a vintage does, and I blame the edge angle. The Ark shaves were pretty good, but nowhere near the screamingly good shaves I usually get off Arks. And then with todays shave it was obvious. I used a finish that gives a quite good shave with a vintage and it was barely passable with this GD... struggling atg, etc.

Definitely going to have to grind these in a bit. Anyone who makes a habit of modding Gold Dollars have any recommendations on the best/fastest/easiest way to take about a quarter mm of each side of the spine? Taping the edge and just grinding on a DMT my best bet?

You can do that.

But I suspect part of your problem is not having good contact. Very hard arkies are paintully slow cutters. Cutting is almost not even the word. More like a cross between polishing and burnishing. So the stone hits the high spots but doesn't knock them down very well. Your best bet for honing these up through the 12k level is a Naniwa or else lapping film.

Yes the bevel angle on the GD66 is still too fat. But if you saw a recent video I did, shaving several weeks' growth off in one pass with an unmodified GD66, I think you will agree that you can indeed make a straight-up GD66 shave quite effectively.

But yeah, a slimmer bevel angle is definitely an improvement, if you want to go in for all that. Taping the edge is one way, but I prefer to use thin sheet metal. The steel wears more slowly and so the honing angle does not change as much. But consider this fine point: you know how you must do a quick bevel reset to correct the bevel if you have set the original bevel with tape but now want to hone without tape, right? Same principle applies to honing down the spine while protecting the edge. Once you remove your tape or other edge guard, you need to hit a 1k or 2k to bring the bevel on the spine into parallelism with the bevel at the edge. After you remove your edge guard and start honing you will see a new facet develop on the spine, at the lower edge of the spine flat. As you hone, this facet will get wider, spreading upward toward the back of the spine. When the old spine bevel has disappeared totally under the new one, then obviously spine and edge bevels are one. There will also be a slight change at the edge bevel, too, of course. Make sure you have reset the bevel properly and fully before starting your progression.

Mostly, the stabilizer and the thick part of the heel adjacent to the stabilizer are no longer an issue, but if your honing wear indicates that it is, you probably should correct it. You can of course hone with the heel leading but if the problem is still there, you will be making too hard a contact at the toe and not enough contact on the heel area. And you will develop a heel hook eventually. If this does appear to be a problem, you need to eliminate the heel point and about 3/16" of the edge there. You can simply round it off in about a 1/4" radius if you don't want to convex it and make a thumb notch. That's sort of what the factory grinders do.

I use a belt sander for the heel correction. Be careful not to overheat! Once you see the BSOD (Blue Stain of Death) you have pushed out the temper and the blade is toast. Well, you could maybe go ahead and hone and use it... the softness will not spread very far up the edge if you caught it quickly enough, but far better to keep contact between thin steel and running belt down to 2 or 3 seconds at a time. For beveling the spine, since it really must be perfectly flat, I prefer sandpaper glued to one of my acrylic lapping plates.

Be sure to FIRST set a preliminary bevel before taping and correcting the spine. The idea here is first make the edge perfectly parallel with the spine, then grind down the spine while KEEPING it perfectly parallel to the edge. This eliminates or at least severely reduces any wonkiness.

 

[Tomo]

My modern TI has a bevel angle of 19.5 degrees. That’s a full 2 degrees more than my other razors (which are much better shavers). I feel a reset coming on. 0.7mm is a lot of steel to loose though.

 

[rbscebu]

My modern TI has a bevel angle of 19.5 degrees. That’s a full 2 degrees more than my other razors (which are much better shavers). I feel a reset coming on. 0.7mm is a lot of steel to loose though.

That probably explains why I was not that impressed with the shave quality I got from my new TI compared to most of my other SR's. I'm use to a bevel angle of about 17° to 18°.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Thanks for all the advice. Started hitting it for about 20 mins on a 160 grit last night and made precious little progress. May try power tools today if I get a chance.

Interesting is this got me to look at the profile of the grind... it's not symmetric, not even close.

While the grind issues are less obvious than in the past... saying they've improved (as I did originally), may be a stretch. They've addressed a lot of the original complaints and the razors can be gotten to shave much faster... but the grind problems separating them from a quality razor may actually be worse now. I'm going to keep at it and thin this down at least to a 17*, but probably closer to 15* if I can keep at it that long... just to confirm the steel hasn't dipped at all in quality. And assuming it hasn't, should be a nice little shaver then.

May have to try one of the nicer ones (81 was it?) to see if they're more "out of the box" good shavers.

Oh and rbsebu, just noticed you transposed your w and t in the formula you gave

2arcsin ( t / 2w) = total angle.

 

[rbscebu]

That's the most unsymmetrical grind I have ever seen!

 

[Slash McCoy]

Almost a kamisori grind!

 

[SliceOfLife]

Yeah I actually thought for a second when I first glanced at the end like that... are they grinding 70/30 now?

I'm pretty bad with my camera, but here it is from another angle so you can see it's not just camera angle making it look like that.


And it kind of makes it look bent too. It's not, here's my guess at the center line... it's just this unevenly ground... Maybe shift the line I drew over right 10-20% (hard to tell where the blade is with the shadows in that pic), but you get the idea... really off-center... but not bent.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Belt Sander is doing the trick... Maybe 20 mins so far (coulda been done in 5 if I had my benchtop set up better for doing this) and I've changed it from ~18.6* to ~17* and evened out the sides... Removed ~.5mm on the fat side and it looks pretty even now.

Might take it down to 16* while I'm at it before honing it back up, will decide later.

 

[DrStrange]

Thanks for all the advice. Started hitting it for about 20 mins on a 160 grit last night and made precious little progress. May try power tools today if I get a chance.

Interesting is this got me to look at the profile of the grind... it's not symmetric, not even close.

While the grind issues are less obvious than in the past... saying they've improved (as I did originally), may be a stretch. They've addressed a lot of the original complaints and the razors can be gotten to shave much faster... but the grind problems separating them from a quality razor may actually be worse now. I'm going to keep at it and thin this down at least to a 17*, but probably closer to 15* if I can keep at it that long... just to confirm the steel hasn't dipped at all in quality. And assuming it hasn't, should be a nice little shaver then.

May have to try one of the nicer ones (81 was it?) to see if they're more "out of the box" good shavers.

Oh and rbsebu, just noticed you transposed your w and t in the formula you gave

2arcsin ( t / 2w) = total angle.

If you want to calculate with different w's on the same blade


arccos (( w1*w1 + w2*w2 - t*t) / (2*w1*w2)) = total angle

 

[SliceOfLife]

Got it down to 16.4*, I'm gonna try it here I think.