The angles of enlightenment

[Linddal]

First, a little history:
I have been wetshaving for 10+ years now. Mostly with DE razor or Feather shavette, but I have dipped my toes into straight razors occasionally.
Recently I have returned to straight razor shaving as well as honing and its been great fun, and I find honing to be super relaxing.

I have been working on honing pretty much every day for the last month or so, and while I could get an acceptable shave from my edges, they were always tugging a bit. I've read and read, and went back to bevel setting many times, thinking I must have missed something, failed to remove scratches from the previous stone, too much/little pressure etc.

I was always conscious of blade angle with the shavette, mainly because I've read many times how eager Feather blades are to cut, but that consciousness somehow never transferred to shaving with a straight - until today.

Today's shave had one purpose - to keep a 'almost' flat angle on the razor and see how it goes, and it went really well. perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised, cause that was also the trick with the shavette.
As a bonus, it's nice to know that my honing, while im still very much learning, can produce comfortable shaving edges.

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

“and while I could get an acceptable shave from my edges, they were always tugging a bit. I've read and read, and went back to bevel setting many times, thinking I must have missed something, failed to remove scratches from the previous stone, too much/little pressure etc.”

So, while blade angle can improve the shave, especially on a razor that the edge is failing or lagging, with experience, you can squeak out a shave with a “dull” razor. Generally, when a razor is tugging, it is a sign that the edge is lacking.

A quick enlargement of your razor shows massive grinding on the spine, that you are honing on the tang and as a result, note the lack of a bevel on the heel half of the razor.

You are only honing ¾’s of the edge and fully half of the edge, or more.

You now have a large step on the spine over the stabilizer, where the spine has been ground down, but now that step is causing a new issue and lifts the heel edge off the hone. This is why grinding away the stabilizer alone often does not work.

The easier, better fix is to reprofile the heel and move the heel corner 6-12mm away from the stabilizer. This will completely avoid the now problematic spine hump.

Older Gold Dollars are not ground evenly, and the spine often swoops down over the stabilizer in a curve and that changes the bevel angle and creates a ramp that easily allows a honer to ride up onto the tang, a common new honer issue. On some, the heel corner will need to be moved even more away from the stabilizer to avoid the spine swoop.

Newer Gold Dollars seem better more evenly ground over the stabilizer.

It is a 5-minute fix that will allow you to hone the whole edge from heel to toe.

HEEL CORRECTION – REPROFILING Made easy.

 

[Linddal]

Yeah, this gold dollar has definitely seen some wear. Much of it is from the last time I dipped my toes in honing. I must say I know more now than I did then. Its definitely a learning process and im thankfully moving forward, even though this razor doesn't show it.

Also I would attribute much of the wear to the way I used to use half strokes. They were a little out of control, and therefore were all over the place. I much prefer regular x strokes now, since it's much easier to stay in control and make sure im not riding the tang.

Im an apartment dweller without a Dremel-like tool, so fixing the heel is not going to happen any time soon. Not sure I'll bother to be honest. Moving forward I'll be more acutely aware of my heel, which maybe, just maybe will make me a little bit better at honing in the future.

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

You do not need a Dremel, just a diamond plate or 1k or lower stone.

 

[Linddal]

You do not need a Dremel, just a diamond plate or 1k or lower stone.

I'll consider it. I do have an Atoma 400. Thanks for the feedback in your original post, its much appreciated.

 

[Frank Shaves]

Great to hear! Sounds like you are making progress.

The more I hone the more I am convinced that it is in fact a simple process and that my initial intuition was directionally sound. Yes, there are some basic principles, but it is also the case of practice makes perfect.

Over time, the angle between the blade and my face has decreased. Seems to make for better shaves - at least for me.

 

[TheBeast]

I could not get my Gold Dollars or Titan razors honed properly until after I reprofiled the heel on each of them. After doing that and having an actual geometry neccessery for achieving a proper edge on razors after honing, I made a huge leap in terms of shaving comfort and honing skill.

I would implore on you to invest 15 minutes into this. It will save you hours and hours of trying to get a better edge and you simply will not succeed without it. I have done it on a diamond plate. And getting some dremel work done in my small apartment is also not a problem, just saying...
Having such a low quality steel and poor geometry on a first razor you are trying to hone is a big big speedbump for progress. Sure, you can make them shave but it takes skill you are trying to learn... I did the same though, so I'm just trying to motivate you a little bit to make this far more enjoyable for yourself, speaking from my own recent experience.

Also, if you can get your hands on a decent vintage razor, you will be surprised how much better it is than any chinese one.

 

[Linddal]

I do hear what both of you are saying, it definitely would have been easier to learn initially if the heel wasn't in the way.

These Gold Dollars are the razors I made my mistakes on which is why they are not pretty. way too much pressure, wide bevels, honed the heel - you name it and I've probably done it, and hopefully learned something from it. I bought them specifically to make mistakes on.

Removing the heel would be easier, yes, but when its eventually time to hone a new Böker, Dovo or TI, im not going to remove the heel to make it easier - I am going to be mindful of the heel, and that's why the heel on the Gold Dollars stay. To make me aware of it so I don't mess up moving on.

I know it could be perceived as an argument taken a bit far, but to me it makes sense.
Lastly, I hope you do not interpret this as me being dismissive of your advice, because I agree that no shoulder on a GD is easier, im keeping it to make honing a bit harder than it could have been.

 

[TheBeast]

I hope you do not interpret this as me being dismissive of your advice

You have no idea how unbothered most guys here would be even if you would

These Gold Dollars are the razors I made my mistakes on

Sure, I play around with them too. Dont matter how pretty they are, we are only looking for signs that tell us the edge is not where it could be.

when its eventually time to hone a new Böker, Dovo or TI, im not going to remove the heel to make it easier

Why not? How can you be sure? Lots of new razors have really stupid shoulders and stabilizers and heels. Lots of guys would not even bother buying a new one, because they can get a top notch razor on ebay for 50 bucks, its going to need a little bit of dress up and its going to be 100-200 years old but its a very nice steel and decent geometry. Even with quality vintage models you'll find a lot of pieces that could use a heel reprofile.

im keeping it to make honing a bit harder than it could have been.

Uhm... why? It's pretty finnicky already. And you're just not going to have a good time shaving with edges that were honed around an imperfection. Too much variables and windows for mistakes.

Anyways, it's just my rambling aimed to share my opinion and experience that somebody might find helpful or entertaining. Every man has a right to die on his hill and I'm not going to question that. So best of luck in your journey! SRs are a life saver for me, they're the only way for me to shave without ingrowns. Took a loooot of honing and shaving though. Like two years worth...

 

[TheBeast]

Just to visualize my point... this is all that matters, the edge. And as you can see, it's not particularly straight or fine. It shaved, but was not very comfortable.

Why? Incostincency, insufficient bevel set - a result of poor geometry and lack of skill.

Even after a heel reprofile, it took like three more tries to improve it.
Who cares about wear on a Gold Dollar? I just grinded and grinded... But it sure helped a lot to grind past the warp and without the shoulder and stabilizer in the way.

And weird shoulders, stabilizers and heels are not a problem only on Gold Dollars...

You have to get very particular with your razor for it to be a breeze to hone, for example a custom one that was forged specifially with the aim to have a no-nonsense geometry and profile. With a decent geometry, steel and a thought-out heat treat comes even more honing friendly experience. Edge retention is another great bonus. It also comes at a steep price point.

 

[Linddal]

Why not? How can you be sure? Lots of new razors have really stupid shoulders and stabilizers and heels.

Im just trying to understand here. I am keeping the heel because I want to be mindful of the heel when I get around to honing the below pictured Böker. That Böker came with a decent edge, so I haven't honed it myself yet. But when I do, I will not be correcting or removing a heel on this - Do you disagree on this? Would you alter the blade?

I can see why this conversation would be different if you only hone on vintage razors though.

 

[TheBeast]

I will not be correcting or removing a heel on this - Do you disagree on this? Would you alter the blade?

That one looks quite nice. The first thing I would do would be to ink the bevels and the spine and do a pass to determine if i need to roll the stroke (if the blade has a smile). To determine if I'm hitting evenly from tip to heel. To determine whether the geometry is such that allows me to hone easily and as precisely as my hands are capable of.
If the blue line should represent the edge of the stone, and the spine is even in thickness to the left of the line, nothing to the right of the line is of concern. And since the heel of the edge is well spaced from the shoulder and stabilizer, this looks like it might be perfectly suitable to hone as is.

But your gold dollar's spine is not straight, nor even in thickness, nor does the heel of the edge start well before the shoulder/stabilizer - which is riddiculously thicker than the rest of the spine. See how uneven your bevel thickness is, how uneven the spine wear is, how your edge seems to end well before the heel anyway? How the heel that was ground from the factory ends below the area where the spine thickens? How you have eaten through a substantial amount of spine thickness increases? This is the reason you won't have as good a shave as you could, have you modified the heel prior to honing. And that would actually get you closer to the geometry of the Boker. Because now you are learning how to hone a Gold Dollar. This will not translate well to honing a razor with good geometry.

Something like this, however, would give you a much better starting point and actually be a better training tool for honing better quality razors.
Note how in that blue circle on the spine, you go from flat spine wear through a hill up to the thick shoulder. Each time you ride up on that hill on the corner of the stone, your edge will loose contact with the stone. Hence your lack of bevels near the heel. That makes it tough to set a bevel even on the parts of the edge that stay on the stone.
Now the heel trails off well before the shoulder starts raising (red), you can completely ignore the shanenigans of that crazy shoulder thickening and raising your heel off the stone (blue), you can actually get an edge all the way to the heel and hopefully grinded away enough material to have an actual straight razor geometry and worked past the typical warps in Gold Dollars. And all that for a 5 minutes worth of work on a course stone/diamond plate/file.

Then you can have something like this:

Even wear on the spine and bevels, an edge actually being present from heel to toe, and a properly set bevel.

I'm not making things up, I went through exactly the same thing. Only after heel reprofiling was I able to get good shaves on razors that needed it. And only after that was I able to have the honing click for me and transfer these skills to 20$ ebay vintages and a 350$ custom razor.

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

“I can see why this conversation would be different if you only hone on vintage razors though.”

Nope.

For about 15-20 years I honed razors for a large Dovo & TI vendor. I hone thousands of brand-new razors, about 98% needed heel correction to sit flat on the hone.

New razors are stamped out of a flat steel blank. At that point the heel corner is established. The razor is then ground, polished and maybe… “honed”. Each step shortens the razor width and moves the heel corner closer to the stabilizer and in some cases past the stabilizer.

The heel corner is where the straight edge ends and the heel curves into the stabilizer.

This is a brand-new razor that will not sit flat on the hone. A few minutes on a diamond plate or a diamond file, and the heel corner can easily be moved away from the stabilizer and allow the razor to sit flat on the hone.

Your Boker, nice razor by the way, likely could use some heel correction, you can easily test this by inking the bevel and doing a single lap on a high grit finish stone. See if ink is removed from the whole edge on both side from the toe to around the corner of the heel.

If not, reprofiling the heel will allow it to sit flat on the stone. Heel reprofiling is just part of honing maintenance. If the heel was properly corrected, you would never know.

Hard to say from that photo for sure, but when enlarged, it doesn’t look like it has been honed, and the heel likely could use correction.

Did you pay for honing?

 

[Linddal]

Your Boker likely could use some heel correction

I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that a brand new razor would need it. But then I again, I don't see many new razors, and probably never will. I might buy 2 or 3 more at max and that's it (hopefully that holds true...).

Did you pay for honing?

No I did not, it was not an option. This is bought from the european official Böker site in Germany. This is as factory as it gets.

 

[TheBeast]

I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that a brand new razor would need it.

I can totally understand that. And I have to confess, I was really skeptical of this at first as well.

I guess a lot of people tend to think something along the lines of "well these guys have been doing this and selling this for years so they should know best, right?"

Not really, unfortunately. Some guys just do it to sell it. They do it as cheap as possible to sell it for as much as possible. See things like the iPhone, a brand new Mercedes, and so on.

I had a side gig repairing phones and let me tell you, the iPhone isn't worth all the attention it gets. I work with the unnamed German luxury automaker (as my current employment) and let me tell you, they are not worth their name nowadays either.

As for straight razors and their geometry - it's real simple. Does it or does it not sit on the stone flat? Your gold dollar, from the picture you provided and from my personal experience, does not. To be expected from a 5$ Chinese "razor".

As for the Boker, what makes it so good? The price tag, the brand reputation? Or a simple test of putting the razor on a stone? A razor needs to be able to be honed without a fuss. To be made this way, it needs to be manufactured with that goal in mind. And unfortunately, the only thing on the mind of a large, current, large scale manufacturer is profit per unit. So it might as well be, that these razors end up being overpriced for what they really are, and in need of a little correction to make the honing experience more of a breeze.

Honestly, I wish you would give it a try. The feeling you get once it clicks is really satisfying. Once you get it for yourself, and once you get it REALLY down to the bone, that is.

Best of luck with your honing and shaving!

 

[Linddal]

A razor needs to be able to be honed without a fuss. To be made this way, it needs to be manufactured with that goal in mind.

This is the exact reason why I would buy a new razor in the first place, to make it easy for myself.

I reasoned the old vintage blades were made on outdated machinery and therefore wonky and crooked in need of correction, and the new ones made by todays standards would be straight and perfect??

 

[TheBeast]

This is the exact reason why I would buy a new razor in the first place, to make it easy for myself.

I reasoned the old vintage blades were made on outdated machinery and therefore wonky and crooked in need of correction, and the new ones made by todays standards would be straight and perfect??

Eh, that's kind of reaching. Define and quantify "crooked" and "straight and perfect". And define "today's standards". There is no regulated standard for the straightness of the centerline of the symmetry axis of a straight razor as far as I'm aware. Though there is a trend of cutting costs and maximizing profit, without any thought for the user experience whatsoever. "Today's standards" versus "outdated machinery" seems like a great sales pitch for a new generation of product in today's market. One that has been around for decades (a straight razor). The only advantage I would consider in straight razors of today versus the ones of the past would be the steel. The geometry is very simple. It's a triangle extruded into the 3rd dimension - a prism. No need for anything else past that. Only connecting the tang without increasing the thickness of the spine and not adding any extra material around the heel. With steel though, you could maybe gain some extra advantage in edge retention and rust protection.

You don't really need a straight razor to be that precise in terms of surface tolerance. If you're honing a razor, you are removing material with each pass on the abrading surface - a stone. The only thing you need is to have a plane running from the middle of the spine through the middle of the cutting edge (the apex). And you want that to be as close to a perfect 2D plane as possible. That's not that hard to achieve even if you hand forged a blade, which many of the custom razor makers do.

The other part is, you want to have a seamless transition from spine to tang without increasing the thickness. At least, you don't want to increse the thickness of the tang before the heel end of the edge ends. Why? Because it's going to raise the heel of the edge from the hone, resulting in exactly what you have in your hands - your Gold Dollar, that's just not going to have a proper edge, unless you correct it's heel. Why? You hone using your hands, not a laser calibrated robotic arm. And your hands are capable enough to screw over all the work with human error, even with perfect geometry. That's why we want to achieve the "as close to perfect geometry as we can". To leave only one variable - human error. Only then we can talk about techniques used and experiences conceived. Because that's the only variable left in the equation of producing a shaving edge.

As a member here likes to point out, he can take a credit card and make it have a bevel in terms of it being hair-removing sharp. I can take a 1$ kitchen knife to my atoma plate and shave my arm and legs after like 5 minutes (if it's really bad to begin with) But I don't want that on my face, daily.

It comes down to fine detail only observable with a SEM, of what makes a face shaving edge tick. But it starts with having a razor, that simply does not have a shoulder/stabilizer that lifts the edge off the hone. And a big brand is NOT a reassurance of quality. Unless you yourself have tried and seen everything and can comfortably state that some or the other brand is better than the other, or that the newer old older (vintage) version of a product (straight razor) is better the other... Not a lot of people have tried everything. Myself, I take inspiration from people that state they have certain experience and can back it up with certain logic and arguments. Then I test their statements myself. Then I only share what I've made sure myself about - and it has to have a theoreticall background backed by actual real world experiment.

So yeah, I've honed and shaved with like 5 gold dollars (not much, sure), and they've all been the same. Not honing and shaving right until after a heel correction, ensuring the shoulder does not lift the edge from the stone (that's what some people warned me about and tried to steer me in the right direction, but I was thinking "just rub the piece of metal on stone and metal becomes sharp" - NOT the case here)

 

[JPO]

Removing the heel would be easier, yes, but when its eventually time to hone a new Böker, Dovo or TI, im not going to remove the heel to make it easier - I am going to be mindful of the heel,

In my opinion, new Dovo, Böker and TI razors do not need to be fixed, they also don't need to sit flat on the stone. I have not had any issues with heels needing to be removed on new razors. The heel only lifts up if the thick part of the spine rides up on the stone. A heel forward stroke keeps this part of the spine off the stone. Problem solved.

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

Yup, not all heels need correction, and you can just hone heel forward strokes...

There are no rules.

 

[JPO]

Yup, not all heels need correction, and you can just hone heel forward strokes...

There are no rules.

View attachment 1993188

I don't think this falls in under the category new factory razors..