To tape.or not to tape.that is the question!

[eKretz]

I am new to this board, but not to straight shaving. I have been sharpening my own razor and getting comfortable BBS shaves for a couple years now. I see a lot of guys who seem to rag on others taping their razors' spines and I don't get it. The usual anti-taping response is that it causes uneven wear and allows the bevel angle to change, whereas the tapers tend to like the cosmetic protection of the Damascus or otherwise spine finish or need to bump up the bevel angle a tad to get a better edge.

Now, for a little background info on myself, I was a journeyman machinist for about 20 years until my back went to hell on me. I have been sharpening knives, razors and metal cutting tools for ages. Here's how I see the situation:

No matter what you do with your razor, you will probably not maintain the bevel angle at its factory specification by not using tape. Here's why. As you remove steel from your bevel, the edge recedes back toward the spine. This is a trigonometric fact. This in turn increases the obtusity of the bevel. On top of that, as the material is removed from the spine its surface area rapidly increases, which slows the rate of material removal vs. what is removed from the bevel, because there is less pressure applied on the spine per unit of area than at the bevel. This also increases the obtusity of the bevel further. So why the big fuss from certain folks? Personally I do all of my honing without tape, but I do use a layer of tape for my CrOx pasted strop, which is a paddle strop made from hard, thin leather over glass. I'm guessing someone will step up to lambast me for that too.

 

[Chaloney]

First, I've never seen anyone lambasted on badger and blade's many forums for any reason in over six months of frequent reading and posting. Maybe you are thinking of another straight razor oriented forum? I can think of one where this kind of thing happens a lot.

Second, you are probably right that without tape the edge on some razors CAN wear faster than the spine, although most of my small collection seem to have a similar width of bevel at the edge as at the spine. There is also the matter of the hardness of the metal in the different parts of the blade--are they quenched edge-first, toe first, etc, also being much thinner, the edge will cool much faster than the spine during quenching. However, with tape you get NO wear at the spine and the bevel angle will, without any doubt, change faster and (over many many honings) further than it will honing without tape.

I think those that are most vocal about tape mostly want newbies to think about and understand the impact tape has on the razor over its potential useful life so they can make a fully educated decision about when to use it, rather than just following the dogma of the "expert honemeisters" as on some sites. All my razors (so far, anyway) are tools, not showpieces. I want them to have as much functional life as possible, so I hone without te, except when I need it--I'm in the process of trying to return an old near-wedge to functionality and honed for hours without tape and still have half the blade with a crumbling/microchipped edge. I recently started the process with tape at the recommendation of a few guys here and have seen some progress.

 

[buca3152]

Tape or not? Depends who you ask. I dont on my personal razors. Wedges that are worn mayhelp preserve the ability to hone it in the future. Even though your angle is getting distorted by taping. Some razors that have fancy spine work or gold wash would preserve a finish. So unless there are certain circumstances i dont.

 

[Isaac]

 

[Gamma]

Factory spec may or may not be maintained not matter what you do - this is a fact.
Thing is - there is no 'real' factory spec. Not really - there's an ideal 'range', that one might view as being 15-19º.
Factually - there's a big diffenece between how any one razor shaves with a bevel at 15º and again at 19º.
We can see that manufacturers aim for that zone - have been for quite some time.
But if you take 5 TI's off the line and spec them out you'll see they're not identical.
They're made by hand, variances are inevitable.
I'm not that critical with the angle of the bevel unelss I have a blade that won't take an edge I want - then I 'might' fatten it up a bit.
If the razor is shaving 'heavy' at 19º - I 'might' attempt to bring the angle down too. Depends on my mood.

The spine's surface area will increase with honing, but that won't, proportionately, slow down the material removal-rate since the 'flat' is on the stone the entire time. The reality here will be more dependent on the amount of pressure/torgue being used, steel type, stone type, etc. Go to 10 different people that hone - you will see there are many varying degreess of pressure being applied at both the edge/bevel and the spine. It's impossible to say who's doing what, and what is going on everywhere with 100% accuracy.

The use of tape will allow the bevel's angle to become more obtuse with each honing.
Not using tape will allow the bevel's angle to remain somewhat more 'insync' with the recession of the edge; the dimensional reduction of the spine's width will, somewhat, mirror what is going on at the edge. Perfectly? No... variables exist and they do matter.

At the end of the day - if you wanna tape - tape. If not, then don't.
If someone is honing their razor so much that using tape has increased the angle of the bevel to where the razor isn't functioning as desired - I would venture to guess that, in the bigger picture, the use of tape is a minor concern.

I use tape when honing wedges and near wedges. I'll also use it to protect lettering that's engraved on the spine.
Otherwise - I don't care about spine-wear. I don't collect/sell razors and to me they're tools, not investments.
For people that own/buy/sell/trade very expensive razors, taping might be the only way to ensure a fair ROI later on.

 

[Alum of Potash]

Welcome to B&B. You may just want to talk to the straight-razor forum, but you can also say hello to the rest of the gang in the Hall of Fame forum.

Normally, I don't tape, but the last razor I honed, a Shumate Ben-Hur, had a pretty visible and lengthy chip in the bevel. So I taped the spine and honed and honed and honed on a medium Cystolon, replacing the tape about eight times when it wore through. Finally, when the chip was gone, I removed the tape and set the bevel proper with a soft Ark. Out of curiosity, I marked the edge with a Sharpie at the start to see how all the taping had affected the so-called spine-to-bevel geometry. After four laps, I looked at the edge with a loupe and all traces of the Sharpie had been removed, meaning that the effect of taping was almost negligible. From there on, I moved to a true hard Ark followed by a black Ark to a hanging strop pasted with ferox and a very nice edge.

I'm glad to have your comments on taping while using crox. My sense is that my edge is improved due to the flex of the pasted hanging strop after the stone. Instead of using the pasted strop, I've often been tempted to tape the spine at the very end of honing with the black Ark to see if I could achieve a similar "flex" effect there. The only downside of this might be that I would have to increase the sag of the unpasted leather strop to make up for this.

P.S., The thing I don't like about taping is that it tends to deaden the sensation and affect the feel and sound on the stone. And as the tape starts to deteriorate (i.e., when removing a chip, or with extened bevel-setting), it also seems to gum up the surface of the stone a little bit, like a secondary form of swarf. Still, it has a kind of average levelling effect of the spine upon the stone, which may be beneficial to newbs who otherwise might risk to introduce excessive spine and bevel wear.

 

[Kentos]

Tape if you want, don't tape if you don't want. The only time you will get grief from the membership is if you state an opinion as fact. .

 

[Brooksie967]

Tape if you want, don't tape if you don't want. The only time you will get grief from the membership is if you state an opinion as fact. .

THIS.

The only fact with tape is that if you continue to hone it with tape, over years and years, the geometry is gunna get messed up.

 

[daflorc]

THIS.
The only fact with tape is that if you continue to hone it with tape, over years and years, the geometry is gunna get messed up.

We're talking like 200 years, right?

 

[Brooksie967]

We're talking like 200 years, right?

The way you hone, probably 5 years or less lol. I've heard stories of you using red housing brick to set a bevel.

 

[buca3152]

The way you hone, probably 5 years or less lol. I've heard stories of you using red housing brick to set a bevel.

Is there any other way? LOL. Or maybe some dia slurry from 2 dmts will increase the bricks cutting power!

 

[August West]

For a proper lamb basting I would check out the Mess Hall forum by clicking here.



Welcome to the forum.

 

[Brooksie967]

Is there any other way? LOL. Or maybe some dia slurry from 2 dmts will increase the bricks cutting power!

LOL you liked that one did you? Honestly that one gave me a good chuckle!

 

[Chaloney]

Normally, I don't tape, but the last razor I honed, a Shumate Ben-Hur, had a pretty visible and lengthy chip in the bevel. So I taped the spine and honed and honed and honed on a medium Cystolon, replacing the tape about eight times when it wore through. Finally, when the chip was gone, I removed the tape and set the bevel proper with a soft Ark. Out of curiosity, I marked the edge with a Sharpie at the start to see how all the taping had affected the so-called spine-to-bevel geometry. After four laps, I looked at the edge with a loupe and all traces of the Sharpie had been removed, meaning that the effect of taping was almost negligible.

I'm just curious, the last application of tape, was it worn pretty much through when you finished? If so, the bevel angle would have been ground to a plane that's level with the spine

 

[cleanshaved]

welcome to B&B
The only time I don't approve of the use of tape is when I buy one honed with tape buy the seller. No problem with the edge, spine wear etc.
The problem is when it needs a touch up, I have to reset the bevel as I don't use tape.

 

[Alum of Potash]

I'm just curious, the last application of tape, was it worn pretty much through when you finished? If so, the bevel angle would have been ground to a plane that's level with the spine

Good point! I didn't think of that. Once the chip had gone, midway through that piece of tape's duration, I said, "What the hell, I've been doing this for so long I'll just keep going a bit more until the tape breaks, just for good measure." So I removed it to head for bevel-setting on the soft Ark when the tape broke through and the spine was revealed, as I had done with the earlier pieces of tape as well. So, yes, I suppose the spine and bevel would have been the same at that point. Hence the immediate removal of the Sharpie on the edge. I stand corrected.

 

[Digginmich]

For a proper lamb basting I would check out the Mess Hall forum by clicking here.

View attachment 385446

Welcome to the forum.

Any chance we could have a Badger & Blade essential grill brush produced??? oh , and welcome to the forum eKretz!!!

 

[eKretz]

Very much more courteous responses than I had expected. You gentlemen are to be commended! I must have been thinking of a different forum indeed. I do disagree about the angle not changing due to the difference in surface area comment though. Having ground, honed, scraped and lapped many an item by hand, I have seen this happen many many times. If you are grinding with a machine and your workpiece is rigidly mounted, then you are certainly correct, but when working by hand, it is very difficult to maintain even material removal from each area when you have contact points of differing surface area. The only way to do so is to repeatedly measure and monitor progress and use differential pressure or to use a mechanical fixture that limits rotation. One must also take into account the thinness of the razor (mine measures .008") and that if one uses any sort of pressure when honing, that thin steel flexes and allows even more pressure to be applied on the bevel, receding it even further.

 

[Doc226]

Lets see

Spine Width Bevel Width Angle
7.5 25.0 17.25
7.4 24.0 17.74
7.3 23.0 18.26

So you see, a very small change in spine width with a larger change in bevel width does not change the angle that much.

 

[Gamma]

Very much more courteous responses than I had expected. You gentlemen are to be commended! I must have been thinking of a different forum indeed. I do disagree about the angle not changing due to the difference in surface area comment though. Having ground, honed, scraped and lapped many an item by hand, I have seen this happen many many times. If you are grinding with a machine and your workpiece is rigidly mounted, then you are certainly correct, but when working by hand, it is very difficult to maintain even material removal from each area when you have contact points of differing surface area. The only way to do so is to repeatedly measure and monitor progress and use differential pressure or to use a mechanical fixture that limits rotation. One must also take into account the thinness of the razor (mine measures .008") and that if one uses any sort of pressure when honing, that thin steel flexes and allows even more pressure to be applied on the bevel, receding it even further.

A few of us here have ground, honed, scraped and lapped a good number of things by hand also.
After you hone a few hundred razors, or hone 1 single razor 80-90 times - you'll see that it's not that difficult to keep the wear consitent 'enough' at all fronts.