This video is thought provoking. I am a newbie with an attitude to dive very deep into any matter that catches my interest. One can make a razor bevel thinner by grinding down the spine, which I accidentally did, since I had to set up a new bevel after messing up with a warped stone. After truing the surface perfectly flat, it resulted in a significant wear of the spine on the coarse stone, since I didn't use tape. My bevel is now broad an shiny and even with only 1000 grit and a chromium oxide flat strop (on the table surface) I was able to trim my beard edges and shave my throat, which is not to say that's perfect, but much better than to be expected from just a 1000 grit. This thinned blade alone confirms that a steeper angle is beneficial if the steel is good quality. In my case it's a inexpensive Jaguar Solingen blade I bought at a barber shop in the eighties and never used. I didn't measure the angle but I can say that the spine has a flat area of about 1.5 to 2mm now and the bevel is more than double the size of it's original shape. I think for the sake of simplicity I'll wait for my higher grit stones to arrive (artificial) and then combine flat honing with concave strop as described in one of the comments here by @stevealper2860. I like this idea a lot as I imagine it would at least help to keep the bevel flat instead of concaving it during stropping. Still with a flat strop I assume that the flex of the leather itself tends to concave the razor, even if less than a hanging flexible strop. Could you tell me, which radius I need to keep. I am planning to create a rigid curved strop and maybe use diamond paste to grind the convex bevel. Feel free to give me feedback on this idea. Thank you for your time. I imagine it to be very complicated for a beginner to start with convex honing on a stone and keep it reliable.
You're comparing a flat bevel and a compound bevel as if they're equal, but the angle at the tip of the bevel is only one element of its creation - also important is a bevel's SHAPE, its apex refinement, and how much of its span behind the apex remains narrower than the diameter of an average strand of hair. If you only grind down the spine, as you suggest, and then do your work on flat references, yes you'll have a more acute inclusive cutting angle °, but NOT a hollow ground bevel. You lose all of the flexibility advantages that the hollow ground bevel creates. Only a wheel or wheel shaped device grinding in to the bevel itself can make a hollow ground bevel. It is much more important for the bevel to have a hollow grind than to have a lowest possible cutting angle, in fact Böker of late has taken to grinding quite a bit more bevel concavity than in the recent past, and then they finish on a CONCAVE finishing stone, making the actual cutting angle tip LARGER than would be present if the bevel had been entirely created with flat whetstones, but because it is backed by such thin steel it still has all the crucial flexibility advantages. This is sort of like what Thiers-Issard has done for years; they first cut in their bevel with the two convex discs rotating in opposite directions (the greenish slate wheels with their broad, but slightly convex, sides facing the ceiling), then they refine that on a huge slightly convex slate bench stone (its diameter is longer than the wheels things' diameters), then they finish on a pasted strop which is gently concave, thus making a thin fine bevel with a tiny bit of convexity at its very tip, ideal for upkeep with a pasted strop. Yes, certainly, a more acute angle is always better, *if the steel can hold up to it*, and that is an "if" which is heavily influenced not only by the metallurgy but more crucially by the razor administrator's abilities to prep/lather, to stretch skin, to choose a low angle of incidence of blade to skin, and most crucially to strop well. It is a hard road to hoe and you're better off favoring the high side of ~15-18° and going for maximum concavity just behind that apex. If you hone on a convex stone(s), you do not get a large flat zone on the spine, because you never touch the spine with any flat surface to grind it away. You do get a wide looking bevel if the razor's had previous time on flat or concave abrasives, but it is NOT a flat bevel you're looking at, it is a concaved bevel. Don't combine flat honing and concave strop; combine convex honing and concave strop, or concave finisher as Böker does, if you want. I don't know what the ideal radius is, because it changes based on the razor at hand. Generally, I've found with factory-new razors today that 5/8" and smaller razors have slightly larger bevel °s and 6/8" and larger razors have slightly smaller bevel °s. To avoid grinding upon the hollow grind zone behind the bevel but still get the most out of your efforts to concave a bevel, thus the ideal beginning radii are a bit larger diameter on the big razors, and a smaller diameter on the smaller razors. Shapes are expensive; in the Golden Age they did the whole thing on-the-fly with but their one Arkansas wheel, spine off the thing the whole time...we don't have that luxury anymore. I chose 3.25' radius as a good compromise for most, but in a perfect world you'd have many different shapes of stones and go by feel and watching the bevel's "shoulders" (the zone of bevel nearest the spine, that's where convex hone work will begin, not at the apex). If a beginner only used very-nearly-cylindrical convex hones, vs quite elliptical hones, I don't see why it would be any more challenging than using flat hones. The reasons to avoid using a flat stone going across the hone's width don't change whether we're trying to obtain a flat bevel, or a convex bevel, or a concave bevel; the razors are never truly flat from end to end of their cutting edge, so if the whetstones are flat, by definition we must either grind away unnecessarily upon one side of the bevel [to obtain a flatter, thicker-tipped, and narrower width object from within the wider, thinner-tipped, and less flat object] or use the so-called "Rolling-X" stroke on the other side of the bevel, which itself is doing much the same thing as making a convexity across the width of our whetstone, you are just reducing the size of your contact patch between razor and hone so that you cannot touch the razor twice with a gap in between them, the moment that a convex whetstone's effective diameter across the width is a smaller diameter than the effective diameter across the never-flat straight razor that one continuous contact patch is assured. hope this helps! Word of warning, though, if you dare to speak openly and objectively about this in the various shaving forums, the men there with their tiny mental phalluses will almost assuredly make you "walk the plank" if you are not already a long established member in their little digital gardens.
Agree, although I use a slightly more hacky method. Hang your stops as usual but stack up two strops together supported with a wool jumper from beneath, then strop the results produce a concave bevel. The shave is noticeably smoother, I also apply chromium oxide and aluminium oxide to the strop, a couple passes with a wax bar that's it. I also exclusively use European calf leather stops with metal rings and no other type. That might also influence the end result. IMO if you're concaving the bevel traditional strops tend to chip the edge, subject to correction of course.
sounds good did u ever approximate your effective diameter by measuring your rise over the stopping span? I have tried, extensively, to induce micro--chipping to see where such risk lays. So far among 40-50 razors I've only been able to get it off of two, an INOX stainless steel [which are not as flexible an alloy as treated] and the thinnest 5/8" razor I have, but only when reducing my stropping diameter to just 15" [at which point tracing the small arc becomes more challenging than at larger size wheels].
Kudos for ordering more lapping plates. I was concerned few would be able to have the means to find the same successes that I have. I firmly support the use of these types of tools based on my experience.
hopefully they continue to sell as quickly as they did originally; str8rzrs is a small market and nobody can supply such a plate in a size good for big Ark shaping at a low price...just shipping to West Coast costs >$20 (it is 4lbs and bulky). Taking Arks off the table it could get much cheaper, but anyone who tries a big convex Ark will be hard pressed to sell such a thing.
@@thesuperiorshave I recently communicated with a few gentleman in Europe who wished they had the same opportunity to have one of these shaping plates as I did. Finally TSS has made a way for the average person to shape their own honing gear in the way ancient professionals did by hand. The “experts” in perfecting the modern & less than perfect work arounds really seem to whine childishly about things they have never tried. What are they afraid of?
@@billm.2677 - Is the performance bump really worth it Bill? I use Jnats, so the shaves I get are extremely smooth. Still though, I am interested, as your enthusiasm and your videos seem to suggest you do in fact get a noticeably better shave. If the results were highly subjective, I'd be a bit disappointed.
All results are highly subjective, always. But who among us has had their same razor honed from both their best flat stone and their local grinder urchin employing only their 20cm Pike hard Arkansas wheel as to make a fairest comparison? Is anyone alive that's had that? Has anyone in e-shavingdom even seen a Pike Arkansas wheel, excluding catalog drawings? We're sure they existed, no? If so, why did they once exist? Why don't they exist anymore?
@@Greyswyndir Defining “worth it” is always a personal thing. For me the answer is yes. That answer is based on the change in the ‘shape’ of the abrasive only. I can’t comment on abrasives I’ve not used. Jnats is one of them. I’ve been working on shaping lower cost stuff so I could make a recommendation for someone wanting to dip their toe in the water before jumping in.
There is the argument to be made that the reason for the overall concave grind on straight razors (or any blade, but typically most extreme on a razor) is that it keeps the overall edge geometry thin, and due to this even when sharpened conventionally (typical “triangle”) that thinness behind the edge will be maintained for much much longer than if there was any less convexity, for a “lifetime” of sharpening, esp when compared to a flat grind blade
Yes, the issue of the ease of maintenance is detailed in printed pages 11-13 of the Norton/Pike "How to Sharpen" booklet linked/cited below. In those 3pgs they use a chisel's profile/description as example, but all logic is the same, and they even specifically mention a "correct" *razor* bevel is concave. They also mention that it cuts better, because it is thinner-tipped. Also of interest in this old book is the inherent assumption one could easily return their hand tools / knives to a local grinder for reservicing, good luck with that now! One could say the hollow grinding of a knife's profile itself provides ease of maintenance and increased flexibility, and hollow grinding *a bevel itself* provides further ease of maintenance [you're left with a tiny scrap of flat to top off w/o touching the remainder, vs immediately interacting with the whole of bevel should it have been set flat] and superior performance [this achieved through its lower inclusive cutting angle, its reduced thickness at a given distance behind the apex, and most importantly through its increases in cutting edge flexibility] ia801009.us.archive.org/34/items/NortonPikeHowToSharpen/Norton%20Pike%20How%20to%20Sharpen.pdf "Broadly speaking, there are only two ways of sharpening tools or knives: 1. By means of a grinding wheel, as in the old fashioned grindstone or the more modern tool grinder,. 2. By rubbing or whetting the tool on some one of the many shapes and styles of oilstones, hones or whetstones. Grinding Wheels Grinding wheels have two enormous advantages: First, they cut steel fast; second, they give the tool a concave or hollow ground bevel. This does not mean, however, that grinding wheels can take the place of sharpening stones, the use of which is explained further on. Now about bevels: Look at the illustrations. The dotted line represents the flat surface of an oilstone or a hone. Fig. 1 Shows a cross section of a hollow ground razor; Properly, all hand tools and knives must be sharpened on this same "Hollow Ground" principle to do their best work. It is hard to see this in a knife, but easy to see it in any tool with a broad bevel, such as a chisel. Fig. 2 is exaggerated a little to show how exactly like the razor is the *correctly* ground bevel of a chisel-both are *concave*. Fig. 3 shows an *incorrectly* ground chisel. The bevel is *straight* instead of concave. This is caused by not holding the tool *in one unchanging position* on the grinding wheel. One object of the concavity is that it makes a *thinner* shaped wedge, hence enters wood, etc., easier than does the straight bevel. Another object is that this hollow ground bevel will last much longer than will a bevel like that shown in Fig. 3. Here is the reason for this: Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 show the hollow ground chisel and the straight ground chisel after they have been sharpened several times on the oilstone. Note that the hollow ground chisel (Fig. 4) is still concave. It will not go to the grinder for some time. But the other (Fig. 5) is now *convex* - it works hard and slow. It should go to the grinder right away."
Give it a go, it can only help. Removing 2.25mm of thickness from an 8" stone = a ~5mØ, excellent general use shape for a ~1000 JIS set-up stone. You have to remove that much from a perfect rectangle, and then blend to center, like a sculptor.
@@thesuperiorshave 😢 that end part like sculpture has me little a worried.... Might have to send in my dovo to you for a honing.so have a good reference to go off of
Subscribed to your channel and ordered the honing plate from EBay! This makes sense to me , and after watching a video from Bill M. On SRP ( also subscribed to his channel. Great demo!) I'm convinced to give this a try. One reason was I really butchered a Thiers Issard Razor trying to get good edge when it had a warp in the spine ( something I didn’t know about many years ago when first getting into Straight razors. Plus I enjoy sharpening and I like to try new things in search of a good edge. Thanks for your knowledge and for sharing. Cheers from Mike in Nova Scotia. ( Edit: by the way your convexing theory also make perfect sense when one thinks of sharpening clippers and scissors, in order to do that you have to buy prohibitively expensive machines that also have a convexed spinning plate in order to get these items back to a factory sharp edge. You cannot get them as sharp or cutting as well on a flat stone without doing this. ( ask me how I know..lol) and this is why most barbers send out their clippers and scissors to be re-honed..just a thought. M.) PSS. Please ignore all the haters and so called experts who don't want to recognize that You might be right and they are wrong. Their egos seem to be very delicate and any contradictions to “ their way” offends them. Too Bad!
thank u for the kind words! Yes, I know of this costly spinning disc thingy, a man in Gainesville FL known for his understanding of JP-style shears has one, JP Plan I think he goes by. That disc is not quite fine enough for this razor work, but I imagine the effective diameter can't be far off from the measure Dovo/Boker/Wacker/TI use with those 'platen' things, themselves a far cry from the standard of yesteryear when a 17-30cm dia. extra fine Arkansas/Thuringian wheel was used (with the aid of expert freehand spine holding, to accomodate for a complex hollow grind profile all within the small
thanx the very best source I've seen is an 1840s textbook for grinders, but alas only in German... However it said to make the bevel in 3 steps, most concavre to rear then less concave middle then flat at apex You'll not find any textbook for razor production, in any language, which would support the notion of flat (isosceles triangle) shaped razor bevels
February 2025 will make 11 years of wet shaving for me. 9 years of that was with straight razors and I've been honing for 8 years and I can without any doubt say that the concave bevel is far superior and more comfortable than it is with a flat stone. All you have to do is shave with a concave bevel one time and you WILL be sold on it guaranteed. The best example is to look at the flattening stones versus the diamond plates. They put those "concave grooves" in the flattening stones to break surface tension and prevent it from sticking to the stone you are trying to flatten while the perfectly flat diamond plate sticks to the stone. This exact same science applies to the shave with a concave bevel versus a flat bevel.
Indeed, excellent point sir! I suspect the great majority on those forums either have not / would never try shaving with a quite-concaved bevel, or used a barely-convex stone and thought it was all the same as starting out with a lifted spine over a wet spinning 12" Pike Hard Arkansas wheel. Degrees of concavity matter just as degrees in chemistry matter. The thing is, though, we've now managed to SELL over 640pcs of "the Jarrod plate", and ~200 various convex hones / films-on-shapes / etc. Within that sample size of 850+ units, how many regular readers of various shaving forums where this is always trashed exist? Easily 200 ppl, as conservatively as you could make it. If 200 various commenters were in these anti-convex-stone forums saying they'd tried it and disagreed, the tide would turn, and more razors would be sold and used, and razors might not perish in Europe. But there are just a few, a small enough number still to seem outnumbered by the forum regulars scared of anything "new" (which, in this case, is a very inaccurate way to describe this!) Beards' prevalence in general is certainly a much bigger factor, but I do believe straight-shaving forums' obviously negative vibe contributes to the demise of razors from European production. Nobody seems to resell these 'the Jarrod plate' or various shaped hones/abrasives secondhand, though, so you would assume they're all continuing to silently use them. Those people just don't understand how damaging that silence is to this business. Nobody's selling many straight razors anymore, not Amazon not specialty shops, nobody. Thiers Issard has only two grinders to handle all their volume. Dovo was bought by a young smart guy 4yrs ago and had 10 grinders then, but I'd wager good $ they're not long for this world unless they can greatly diversify. The Bökers/Thiers-Issards each sell much much more cutlery not related to razors, where they can keep things going easily w/o str8rzrs, but what of the rest...Herr Aust will retire soon enough, some other names you know in the forums are just part time side hustles, and all the other makers like Ertan Suer and Koraat are 1-person shops (or 1-grinder + other less skilled workers in any case, like Wacker). We are the lifetime where 2+-person "factory" razorworks perish for the first time, in some small part because we insist, 'officially', in published historical records on preparing their cutting edge in way their makers did not intend for the item they made.
What would you say to those who say "the home user didn't have super ultra mega sharpening stones, in multiple progressions, like we do. So, of course they could not get the bevel/edge as thin/fine/keen/etc as they could with the multiple wheels at the factory, but today the differences between factory finish and well executed home finish would be minimal"?
'minimal' is a relative term, not an absolute term The point of the vid is that the makers of the razors intend for the bevels themselves to be slightly hollow ground, not flat, not convex. On the forums, the self decreed experts espouse the flat bevel. Thus, to the grinder who actually made the tool and had to go to a school for 3yrs (after first apprenticing 2yrs full time) for the right to sell that to the German consumer, they ("every 'honemeister'") are doing it wrong. As to how meaningful the difference is, I'd say it is something like the difference in a top quality MM cartridge vs an avg quality MC cartridge with avg quality step-up transformer. Could you listen to a Marantz TT15S1 (= Clearaudio) and be impressed by its MM cartridge, and happy forever? Certainly. But if you became quite familiar to a certain piece of music on a certain vinyl in a certain room with a certain set of speakers and amplifier, would you then hear a difference with a MC cartridge and step-up transformer being the only variable? I suspect so. Comparison is the robber of joy. When you remove about 10 microns from the rear shoulder of a typical 5/8" razor, that's more than 5% of the metal missing there... however fine and modern we make the apex ~1000 microns away from that point where the bevel meets the hollow grind, it will move more easily if it is missing that metal. You'll also increase the sum area of metal thinner than a hair, and no matter what the apex of such an area looks like, if it is thinner than a hair it enters the hair and if it is thicker than a hair it cleaves. For some people that difference can be felt, for some not, and if u have no problems using a str8rzr as it is, pat your good fortune on the back! That doesn't mean it wouldn't feel better for you if thinned, and it doesn't mean some people are unlucky enough that if the bevel were not thinned no apex condition could solve it. The easiest way to see a difference is to thin a well known to u razor finished on modern stuff. FYI, for the bevel itself, back in the day of peak Victorian era excellence, they only used one wheel, not multiple wheels. The honing was commonly done on a single 7-12" dia. Arkansas stone wheel, foot powered & with a water trough. Quite obviously that was way too small a diameter for the spine to be anywhere near the wheel, so it was all freehand. Prior to the double wheel hollow grinder, hollow grinds were done with larger wheels one side at a time, and in Sheffield they would use a pair of such wheels to both establish and then refine a bevel, all freehand. But the lucky gent from then had a peak performance we cannot have, for he had hard Arkansas edge and superior bevel thinning.
Hello, My familly are traveling sharpeners in germany since 1407 they always sharpen razors on wheels. We sourced our own natural stones. For general rough knife sharpening they used a big wheel of Wesersandstein and for Razors they had a smaler coticule wheel. They even thinned out the main hollow grind on razors with the rough wheel and refined the scratchpattern with a leather wheel and natural stone powder glued to it.
that is fascinating stuff! Have you personally seen/used a Pike/Norton hard Arkansas wheel? What was the thickness and diameter of the coticule wheel? Powered by your feet on a spindle? For the hollow grind, what was the diameter? Have you used a 'sea cow' wheel? thank you for your comment!
@@thesuperiorshave no i never used a Pike/Norton wheel, the big rough wheel my family had Was from natural sandstone and had a big diameter probably 70-80cm and was foot powered in a water trough. The coticule wheel was smaler i think 30-40cm it was with a grip you had to turn by hand and not in a trough but with a canister of water above it so that you can control how thick the slurry is. They also used a very fine grenish benchstone for the finishing that they sourced them self. And a peace of leather Glued to a piece of wood, they didnt used a hanging strop at all. But i have to say i didnt saw there Equipment myself what i know is Just what my father have told me. That is because the nazis confiscated all this stuff along with just anything they had and deported my family to Ausschwitz around 1942. after the war my grandfather used electrical machines to sharpen and many people stopt using straightrazors and used shavettes with disposable blades
Interesting for sure thank you for the info. 2 questions please. When you do this type of honing does the spine of the razor taking a convex shape as well? And do you "flatten" the convex stones on this aluminum plate to keep the shape ? Obviously is not flatten the word but you get what I mean in flat stones we do flat them so in convex stones you keep convex them? Thanks
The spines will not show big flat zones after repeated honing, obviously, because you're contacting the spine with a wheel shape, both in the direction from spine to edge and in the direction across the cutting edge. It still wears, but a large flat wear will be no more. As to 2nd q., yes, I use my little invention to resurface and geometrically maintain my stones. However, German grinders and likely others have for decades shaped their stones by hand, like a sculptor. They didn't have my little invention. So, they prepare their bench stone geometrically as they wished, and then they shaped an inverse rubbing stone by wrapping the base stone in sandpaper and rubbing with the rubbing stone until you create the inverse in the rubbing stone, then u use that to both clean and keep shape of your bench stone
I'd like to point out a couple things. First, I believe you are misunderstanding the reference to Fig 2 a bit. The point on a wood chisel should be a concave shape however, the bevel they are talking about is the TOTAL of two points in that concave shape. Point A being the tip and Point B being the other end of the concave shape or as in a razor the edge to the spine of the razor. Second, If you look at the bottom of page 22 in the section called To Hone a Razor it literally states " Hold the razor perfectly flat on the hone. The thick back takes care of the bevel." Also, the national archives also has a book called "Shaving Made Easy What the Man who Shaves Ought to Know" from 1905 that has really good info on honing and shaving. It also states place the razor flat on the hone.
I do not believe that Pike was referring to the concaved hollow grind section of the straight razor when they used the term "bevel", but we can agree to disagree. *professionals* (which is not the target audience for what pg 22 says, which is in direct opposition to the sentence you're conveniently ignoring that a correctly ground razor bevel, as on a chisel, is concave) had always used wheels to hone. The idea is the razor arrives to the end user sufficiently concave, they keep it up (while thickening the bevel % with their flat hone), eventually the flat % of the bevel's too much and it needs 'razor concaving', and they then returned to a professional most likely using a Pike Arkansas wheel for the finest edge. You are just another person in a long line that hasn't tried any serious bevel thinning for themselves and is going in lockstep by the forum dogma. The 1905 book doesn't say it is for *professionals*, as in grinders, etc. Find me any book about razor grinding that says to produce a wholly flat bevel - you won't find one, and I've already found at least four publications from the 19th century all specifically mentioning the wheels to be used for the final edge, their diameters, etc. *professionals* used/use wheels, home users flat stones, before I created the anti-shape there was nobody that ever tried to make a shape which kept a stone as a repeatable wheel. This is new terrain.
Wait a second. Question; Does that mean that historic barber hones and consumer bought natural hones - the overwhelming majority of which were flat - were only ever meant to fix / polish / hone the tip of the edge, not the "entire bevel", or was it expected that the home user would grind off the concave bevel and create their own flat bevel? Also, a razor's edge and spine are designed to wear at rates that would allow an edge to maintain a reasonable bevel angle, so what does that mean for home - flat stone - upkeep, when the razor has a concave bevel? Did manufacturers expect this "mix and match" approach vis a vis commercial and domestic sharpening, and wouldn't you have to 'wear / grind off' the old concave bevel to create a new 'flat' bevel on the flat sharpening stone you had at home ? Also also, the only old convexed stones I have ever found in the wild came from old cutlery shops (two in Britain and one in Holland, all from small towns), which would suggest that people in 'the biz' would try to maintain the manufacturers standards of a concave bevel, even at a local level. So many potential questions... Great and fascinating video, Jarrod. Thank you.
~2011-2013 we had a German fellow who would drive to France, acquire coticules from boot sales, ship to us and we split the profits. There were many paddles mounted in wood and they were all slightly convex, so I think in some regions people knew back in the day of the benefits to thinning the edge. But generally, if you look at the linked Norton 1934 book, razors were delivered new or professionally resharpened with a symmetrical version of figure 2 for their bevel profile... then the home user slowly makes the tip of that bevel thicker and flatter with both the use of the razor and topping off with their flat stone, causing a thicker triangle shape to start taking over the bevel profile's span. At some point this was felt enough by the home user to cause the shaves to be unsatisfactory, at which time their local with a wheel would reestablish the thin profile.
I have to agree , as I test 5years ago I bevelled a small chisel ,it cut beautifully after , then I forgot all about it as I'm mostly a metal worker . July of this year I've taken up straight razor shaving and I suspect same logic applies , my shave today was not comfortable , razor refreshed on flat diamond spray strop was too harsh . But it's all that's mentioned ! Flat stones flat strops ?
The strop being a wheel is just as beneficial as the hone, though for some xtrmly thin razor/steel combinations they may benefit from a hanging strop's tendency to convex the tip (to prevent micro--chipping if the grind's super thin and the steel not flexible enough).
have never personally loved any edge w/ diamonds involved in its process, for me it is coticule#1 Arkansas#2 but Ark gets closer so I use it as first preference. I don't think they (Arkansans stone) can be surpassed for the combined minimum performance of smoothness/sharpness, others are smoother/closer for me but only in comparatively larger concession in the other attribute.
yer welcome it isn't to say diamonds can't work for some (otherwise they wouldn't sell so long), perhaps ardent skin takes it well, but my skin's senstive and cuts easily
there are many factors beyond pure shaving comfort - tracing an ever smaller stationary object well requires more skill, thicker stones, & more labor/abrasives to produce them. Shorter diameters also make wider bevels that some will not like visually. But 3' will not challenge a well tempered razor, even in mid 19th c. some factories set the whole bevel to a 12" wheel and then finished the tip on a flat or gently convex (long diameter) benchstone, still others used just a 7" wheel in 3 phases, freehand holding spine off stone for 2nd step / finishing. For the purposes of producing a single tool I must consider practicality to produce the plate, too (short diameters require more metal)
@@thesuperiorshave thank you for the quick response. It’s amazing how knowledge and tradesmanship gets lost so easily. It’s a shame and now keyboard pirates are always there to tell us different.
They certainly know best, & now what I'm doing (once the incumbent professional standard) is now the dark arts in our topsy-turvy time. What will it take for this to be reversed for shaving's betterment? If the words of the world's largest abrasives mfgr can be tossed aside in an echo chamber, how can the trend be curttailed? I've honestly no clue.
my opinion is that the relatively smaller variances in performance of particular finishing stones [when compared all as wholly flat isosceles triangle shaped bevels] is easily surpassed when compared to sny reasonably competent finishing stone set up as a concaved bevel, and I base this belief on the observation that when (at age 48) I reshaped my longest owned coticule (that I'd given up on shaving myself at age 40) it suddenly felt plentifully sharp for my beard it didn't get sharper(finer), nor did I improve as a hone adminisrator - it just changed in feel on my face due to the geometry it only then imparted once shaped as a ~7x2m ellipse
I had watched this video before but went back to watch it again with more attention and I can’t believe the part about honing on the tiny portion of the stone thinking that gives you a similar result… some people are just… stupid I guess 😂
yes, good old steve56, you would think after parroting that line for years and years now, showing his little pictures of his Japanese scraps of rock narrow enough to touch a small % of a razor edge or using the corner of a stone the same way, that he would find something else to do with his time. But, sadly all he has is time, and not enough to do with it. This is why his collection of unobtanium is so incredibly extensive and pristine, it is all an attempt to find something to do. Yet however much time steve56 man has, he will not *meaningfully* shape a stone, or even use the little wooden blocks with lapping film. Instead, he'll show another one of his little pictures we've all seen in these many threads where a piece of float glass has a very small concavity, as if that is akin to a 6" stone shaped 6.5'Ø with ~3mm of rise in the center that is plainly obvious to a human eye w/o any rulers or flat things nearby needed in the picture. For many readers, they actually will believe him. Sure helps the hobby, don't you think? There is a new thread on the badger and blade forum yesterday and steve56 is asking [in regards to comparing vs a convex stone] as he has already done many many times before, "why not just thin the spine?" to get a lower inclusion angle. Ignoring that you're permanently altering the razor in his example, the real reasons should be plainly obvious to an engineer (which he claims to have been, or still is); the reduction of apex angle is only a minor factor. An isosceles triangle shaped quantity of metal area and a similar sum quantity of metal area with a steeper angle at the rear and a flatter angle at the apex (like a bowl-shaped ski slope, they don't rate them by the easy part at the end they rate them by the cliff at the beginning!) will not *move* the same way to force, so the responsiveness of the steel is changed. Furthermore, the area extending *behind* the apex which remains narrower than let's say 70 microns (for an average human hair) is NOT the same, the second example has a longer dimension where the steel is narrower than a whisker, ALL of that steel enters in to a cuts a whisker. Any part of the steel which is narrower than a whisker is relevant to the concept of entering/severing the hairs. We also enjoy H Brad Boonshaft's expert chime-ins, too, yet another true master like Keith Johnson and all the rest, those who will never meaningfully try to shape their bevels and instead will show us stones with the tiniest convexity to them as if they're the same thing, as if shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet are just the same, as if a tennis ball and a volley ball are all just spheres you play with, and on and on the mental gymnastics go WITHOUT ever trying for themselves, so that they would not need the "blind taste test" [that they also will NOT try] which they claim will refute the idea of the concave bevel. The one thing they'll always refuse to do is set up their bevels with a wheel 7' or less and see what happens. Razor makers DID once upon a time make big concavities in factory bevels, and for re-sharpening. The reason manufacturers don't make the razors with a large concavity to the bevel is only because they don't have those Arkansas wheels anymore, or any other similar wheel 12"Ø and super fine and slowly rotating and water cooled to set in and refine their bevels. If they had such, they would surely use them. Synthetic stones are not hard and fine enough for this task. The 'platen' discs they all use, with the abrasives surface spinning parallel to the floor, set in bevels on blunt razors in under one minute. Unfortunately, even the little lapping film on a stick method's going to take a whole lot longer than that. But perhaps new make straight razors' sales will get so low that they would have that time due to lack of demand, and if they had it because of a dearth of sales, I think they might use such a method. People on forums don't understand how small the razor 'factories' are, as an example Thiers-Issard whom my wife and I visited in May makes likely the second most in the European world to Dovo, and they only have two full time grinders and only one other person hands-on the razors. Dovo has less than ten people. It is a tiny business now.
@@thesuperiorshave Yes I think I was that started that thread asking a question to other convex honers if they took their 6 foot wheel all the way out to the apex. JPO gave me a great answer but somehow the conversation in the forum quickly changed from the original point. "as if shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet are just the same" this made me laugh but so true 🤣
It seems like the reason convex hones and honing isn't popular is simply because it's difficult to create a hone in the shape of a wheel. It's much easier to buy stones and maintain flatness then it is to buy flat stones, shape them like a wheel, and then maintain that shape. Maybe if more people had access to razors honed on a convex stone, they might see the value in using a wheel shaped hone? Long story short, it's not as practical or convenient, so people stick with flat hones. Is the shave really that much better? I don't know. I do know that buying more specialized equipment and putting more time into honing just to get a minimal increase in comfort or keenness may not seem worth it to most people. I have a curious nature, so at some point I will try out a convex hone.
Opinions vary. Some might even be that the use or forged straight razors is a waste of time. The variance in shaving comfort, which is obviously a subjective unquantifiable metric, was nonetheless important enough to all producers to use wheels instead of flats, and important enough that none other than the world's largest abrasives manufacturer took the time to specify, in print, that a razor bevel should be concave and not flat. And yet devotees in forums dedicated to the task, who conceivably place an extreme esoteric importance upon the nature of their razors, strops, & whetstones, will continue to resist their geometric voices of reason within... to win a battle for keeping things simple, or as they were. I would submit that it is easier still to just use a cartridge/safety razor, and for that matter some foam from a can. I also don't think special tools are needed to shape hones as wheels because I've seen them hand shaped this way in Japan to an excellent level of precision. But yes, certainly, flat is easier - and dished (concave) is easier still, why complicate things! To me your argument is akin to saying I already own the best engine, so what do I need to worry of keeping precise air pressure in my tires. It all matters; the abrasive making the scratches and the alloy and temper and size and grind profile of the razor, as well as the *shape* of its final cutting edge. It is silly to deny what's obvious, and it is obvious that a thinner piece of a given steel (if of sufficient metallurgical design and kept to specific task to perform without structural failure) enters wood or fish or vegetables or hair shingles more easily than does a thicker piece of the same steel. Also stands to reason that flexible steels will flex less if made thicker and flex more if made thinner. So if you want to knowingly leave hair entry ease and flexibility advantages on the table becsuse you're happy with your incumbency, that is to be applauded; contentment for those of obsessive nature is always the truest brass ring.
@@thesuperiorshave - I'm not arguing, I'm just pointing out what seems to me is an obvious truth, that people tend to follow the status quo, and on shaving forums, people love their Poobahs. I'd like to try a convex hone myself. Maybe if you ever get that order filled by Dan I'll get the chance.
Indeed. Dan's has had that order for 5+ mos., so I wouldn't hold out much hope they want our money, no matter how earnest their phone etiquette. Why not simply hand shape a couple AliExpress Special waterstones +2mm of curve for 200mm length and try them out vs a Gold Dollar or other beater? I'm sure they'll immediately impress anyonr more concerned with their shaves' quality whilst alive than their stones' girths after their death enough to convert all their hones soon thereafter, or maybe just keep one finisher flat. That would cost $30 + time or so, you don't have to patronize this business. People become defensive/threatened about this topic b/c they think you're saying their razors' edges' condition isn't good, which is not what I'm saying. I'm only saying they could be thinner and more flexible, no matter their chosen abrasive. Mathematically and metallurgically, those are facts. They're objectively true. The rest is subjective. So if folks wish to become offended or threatened, they should do so against a position of "your razors' edges could be thinner and more flexible than you make them now without the razor function suffering in any way, but they aren't" Aiming for convenience never was a factor for me adopting use of forged razors, it was something I'd endure any inconvenience for any steel-on-skin benefit.
@@thesuperiorshave - I was thinking about shaping a coticule I have. It's about 7.0"x1.68" and I don't really use it. Making it convex would at least give me a good reason to use it. I just personally like wider stones, and a sub 2" stone just isn't my cup of tea.
That sounds a good idea, just check your work with a ruler going straight across the 1.7" axis in addition to down the 7", you don't want gaps that way either and just the tiniest of slope keeping the center line the thickest will suffice. Take ~1.75mm of strata from the two 1.68" wide endcaps [starting with a flat reference] and blend that work to the midpoint, gentle correction on width, and you'll have a wheel of about 15', certainly enough bevel concaving that anyone with experience with forged razors can tell the difference while shaving. I, too, struggle with narrow hones, even when they're shaped to the ~7.5x2m axis and the contact patch is
This is how religious cults get started. I've debated a bit with myself about commenting on this, and from a razor sharpening standpoint I'm pretty indifferent. However I did as you asked and downloaded the book you're referencing. While I'm quite certain you know more about sharpening razors in actual experience and in theory than I do. You are in point of fact misreading and misunderstanding that book. Which is made quite obvious by figure one. The concave shape *hollow grind* of the razors is shown to be back away from the edge, the edge itself is shown to be flat on the dotted line and is consistent with the spine of the razor. In other words the edge of the razors angle is set by the spine. They aren't concerned with razors in this book particularly, they are using the hollow grind of a razor (well known at the time) to illustrate it's usefulness for other tools such as plane irons. Everyone keep in mind that norton is primarily interested in selling abrasives. Including but not limited to abrasive wheels. Figure two is illustrating an edge like is found on a chisel or plane iron. Which absolutely would benefit from a hollow grind (I do own hand planes and chisels) the hollow grind from a wheel enables, for one thing, much faster sharpening because you don't have to worry with honing so much metal. It also allows a lower angle and hence thinner edge. Just like honing a hollow ground razor is faster than trying to hone a wedge razor. If you'll kindly reference page twenty-two of the book you'll notice they show honing the razor on a flat stone and say to that the spine takes care of the bevel. Now it may very well be that you have discovered a technique to enable a keener shave. If so kudos to you sir! However there is most certainly no special knowledge about razor honing in the book that you referenced, and with all due respect, the manner in which you've titled this video and how you speak of others in it is embarrassing considering you completely misunderstood what those old dead guys wrote.
We can agree to disagree, human, for if your statement was correct Norton/Pike wouldn't have written "Fig: 2 is exaggerated a little to show how exactly like the razor is the correctly ground *bevel* of a chisel - both are concave." They would not have added the word "bevel". The words matter; the drawing is (greatly) intentionally simplified, just like drawings in books of razors' hollow grind-ness do not normally show four to six different effective diameters across the span, or the belly's presence for that matter. From the professional perspective of a new razor leaving a factory 'shave ready', I ask you to find any printed historical text in books either made for grinders' study or describing such which says a razor bevel should be a flush isosceles triangle field (like the "Fig3" example). You won't find that, because it doesn't exist - razors always had a wheel form do the vast majority of the edge creation if not the whole since the advent of hollow grinding, and if a flat (or even concave) stone was used on a hollow ground razor, it was only as a final step. Wheels are faster and make a thinner edge. The later parts of this Pike manual, where the flatness of the stone and razor edge/spine are emphasized, are for the end user, who would NOT be expected to have an Arkansas wheel {which they made and sold at the time, prices only upon request}. They would home keep their razor as close to {EDIT FOR TYPO} "fig4" as possible, working only the small area of the bevel( that's been flattened after being worn down through shaving), and eventually they'd resharpen and it still wouldn't be comfortable, the flat portion % becoming large enough to necessitate 'razor concaving' as it was known, meaning a wheel shaped form was again brought to the bevel. Both professionals and end users alike would be expected to use such a catalog. And what do you have to say of the 1846 German grinders' textbook "Polytechnische Mittheilungen" where it details to use a three shape, three stone method, the goal being for the last step to be so hard/fine/flat a stone that, given how thin the area has already been made by the prior steps, the loss of acuity/keenness from reverting to a flat ending was minimal, and that only certain barbers, grinders, and razor sharpeners were known to use wheel forms through until the end? My source on this stuff, originally, was Thiers-Issard's prior owner, who told me in no uncertain dismissive terms "Americans will never understand or accept the convex hone". Presuming you're American, you're just proving his point, made looking down his nose at us for our stupidity. All the Solingen parties do it, too, but they don't want to talk about it because bringing it up will hurt their sales to Americans, they'd rather the issue went away. Even Böker writes about the notion in 2022; thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/KPKP5952.jpg Böker didn't write "..., which is a perfect triangle form" or "which is slightly convex" or "which is always kept flat" or just not bring it up. They specified it has a slight hollow in the edge itself. I sure wish I had a magic eraser to remove the early naive discussions started by me those many years ago, when informing Dovo & TI's end users that we (that includes me) were all sharpening them wrong, according to Dovo and TI in any case. I didn't know I was about to be told - again, in no uncertain terms - just how little those producers actually knew!
You certainly did not disappoint! As I previously stated, you absolutely know more in practice and in theory than I do about razor sharpening. Keep in mind I'm not here to debate you on this, as stated I'm pretty neutral on the concave bevel subject. I only took issue with the source material that you used in this video. I am not and did not say you were wrong about the concave bevel of the edge of a razor per se. But that your evidence in this video was absolutely lacking, even with the words on the page you quoted which I did read before commenting originally. I had hoped that you had more to base this on than the book you referenced. And you have shown me that you do, I'm intrigued at least. Also I have no difficulty comprehending a convex hone or the edge it would produce. I just thought you did yourself a disservice with this video, you have much more evidence to offer on the subject. That is excellent, but unless people are made aware what good does it do them? Thank you for your response, I admire your passion for the subject in taking the time to reply to what some would consider a troll such as myself.
I've gobs more proof/evidence of the practice than in this video. Remember, everyone's attention spans (including my own) dwindle daily. Besides, you can list as many as you want, and (just as the dismissive Frenchman who owned Thiers-Issard declared to me 12yrs ago) Americans will never understand or accept this. They'll do anything to dissuade themselves of the importance or wisdom of intentionally creating anything on a razor bevel's geometry but a perfectly flush 2/3rds of an isosceles triangle. They can't take it! A razor's bevel must be entirely flat, and even better if its spine is kept nice and clean with tape!! Many other various pcs of information regarding the correct-to-the-manufacturers form of a hollow ground razor's bevel have been shown in prior videos, some shown here; thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/0923202105safefortsssite.jpg {very old British example detailing how wheels were used, prior to the hollow grinding machine's invention} thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/0925202101safefortsssite.jpg {seems these old guys are touting the thinness of a razor edge for goodness knows why} thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/021020222.webp {these old guys are touting 'razor concaving', which - obviously - they *only* meant would increase the concavity of the hollow grind zone, the bevel excluded from such (as per Pike)} tinyurl.com/jt59cw5u {German only} thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/farny.jpg {this device intends to sharpen all the way to the edge with a convex mechanism} We'll just have to agree to disagree that my [literal] reading of Pike's writing from the early part of the booklet deems Pike to be stating that a factory-ideal straight razor is to have a concave *bevel* [not just a concave hollow grind] and the things on page 22 are for the end user of 1934 [who would not be expected to be able to own/operate/maintain an Arkansas wheel which requires far greater skill, investment, capital, and space], while your interpretation of their writing eschews the importance of the word 'bevel' in the aforementioned paragraph in favor of the illustration's interpretation, or simply interprets their use of the word 'bevel' to mean what we refer to today as the hollow grind zone of a razor, and that their advice on page 22 is what matters for sharpening razors at any level, professional or amateur alike. I am quite used to 'trolls', btw, though I wouldn't term your actions worthy the moniker. thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/patheticglitterbombsentbypaymentfromamaninTennessee-scaled.jpg no penis glitter bombs were ever sent to me prior to all this convex hone shyte, and I have zero presence on any social media beyond pimping this tiny business. And yet only AFTER the convex shaping plate came along did I suddenly start receiving penis shaped glitter bombs, cylindrical glitter bombs, and 30-50 various deliveries of cash-on-delivery pizza/Chinese food/etc [I created a shaping mechanism as you can see here thesuperiorshave.com/product/toolsforhoning/
You can`t ague with the facts with such written text on convex, these people new what they were doing back then and many many test would of been done be for going into production. As you have done many hours possibly months into the research and shaping your honing stones to a convex using your home made plate you taken into production , Could I pick your brain and ask ` when using your blades on your convex hones , Does the hone wear down the the blade in the area you state , the Zone of increase thickness between thinnest Zone and cutting edge where you have drawn a red triangle area illustrated on the picture you shown on the blade, Because if it does then that`s undermining the strength of the blade,hitting the thicker area as well as the bevel. If it does (not) touch that triangle illustrating the thicker area of the blade just be for the bevel, and it only touches the spine and bevel nothing else` then the convex stone has to be so accurate, to hit only these too points , how often does the hone that`s been shaped convex have to be placed back on the plate to be reshaped,to keep it so accurate. I presume the complex part that gets thicker would serve several principles one to give better cutting edge due to reasons you've stated` one being where its thicker strengthens the flexing of the blade and when a wedge is so big it with full hollow ground ,might help to prevent warp, Due to the thin part above if it carried on getting thinner all the way to the bevel the edge might be to acceptable to warp as well,
how often u reshape is heavily influenced by abrasive strata, an inverse shape rubbing stone helps greatly in prolonging use before reshaping The diameters used here are chosen so that the work occurs in the bevel itself. Certainly, all removing of steel = reducing blade durability. But we are doing only one task for this tool and for that task this reduction in durability has proven of no consequence. I've tried deliberately to meaningfully fatigue the razors, on many dozens of blades, the only two I got anywhere with that 1) one is stainless steel 2) one is 5/8" and does not have a shoulder and perhaps did not have the very best outcome in regard to its hardening procedure
Ironically flat stone honing is something fairly new so it's not like it's some traditional way of honing and sharpening that's being threatened. You can see it in a lot of medieval and later art that they used wheels to sharpen and hone swords and knives.
the whole concept and your diagrams are flawed, if they made the bevels on the outer diameter of the wheels then yeah but by placing the razor on the flat side of the wheels they are doing what you say is wrong, either way you want to look at it they are putting flat bevels on the razor before it's ever sharpened
@@thesuperiorshave dude you put the link up "thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/thiers-beveling.jpg" so if they're bevelling on the flat "side" of the wheels instead of the outside diameter(is that easier for you to understand as wheels are 3d objects) the bevel is the same as doing it on a flat stone, if the bevel is set using the outside diameter then your right but after sharpening shit for a living for 50 years there is no wrong or right way, not everyone does shit the same way
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/annewheelconvex.jpg It was the prior TI owner who first told me those greenish French slates are convex, twelve years ago over the phone. But there above in screenshot, you can see the Dovo representative confirming their stones are also made convex, and there is a YT vid in the factory we made (the inlay pic is from early in that vid) where you can hear their former managing director saying about the convex stone. Don't go by "you thought it looked flat" in these videos to decree that is so, when it is perhaps curved +2mm over a ~28-30cm grinding surface, that is easy enough to miss but the razors know the difference. The tool is prepared as a grinder makes a big telescope mirror, on its 'flat' sides, until it has the finished shape for working. A similar geometrical concept was employed by this contraption; thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/farny.jpg Everyone can wrong or right way *their own tool purchased for their own consumption* however they like, it is your tool! But are not the *manufacturers* still allowed to define what is | is not defective/correct treatment of their own productions. Many times there is only one right way for the manufacturer.
I'm saying TI's owner told me they were curved as in this picture (added some curves to try and show better the idea); thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/thiersbevelsettingdiscsareconvex.jpg these things are curved, the big Pyrenees bench stone {which is curved too, but less so}, then just pasted strops, that's how they did it when he ran things. The idea was to produce a bevel where further sharpening on flat field abrasives or pasted strops (preferred) will only touch a small minority of the bevel span, rather than having a perfect bevel in abrasion or overall geometry. Keep things going this way for years and you only consume that original zone of bevel in front of the extra thin zone, it is foolproof as long as you like pastes (which the French do).
This video is thought provoking. I am a newbie with an attitude to dive very deep into any matter that catches my interest. One can make a razor bevel thinner by grinding down the spine, which I accidentally did, since I had to set up a new bevel after messing up with a warped stone. After truing the surface perfectly flat, it resulted in a significant wear of the spine on the coarse stone, since I didn't use tape. My bevel is now broad an shiny and even with only 1000 grit and a chromium oxide flat strop (on the table surface) I was able to trim my beard edges and shave my throat, which is not to say that's perfect, but much better than to be expected from just a 1000 grit.
This thinned blade alone confirms that a steeper angle is beneficial if the steel is good quality. In my case it's a inexpensive Jaguar Solingen blade I bought at a barber shop in the eighties and never used. I didn't measure the angle but I can say that the spine has a flat area of about 1.5 to 2mm now and the bevel is more than double the size of it's original shape.
I think for the sake of simplicity I'll wait for my higher grit stones to arrive (artificial) and then combine flat honing with concave strop as described in one of the comments here by @stevealper2860. I like this idea a lot as I imagine it would at least help to keep the bevel flat instead of concaving it during stropping. Still with a flat strop I assume that the flex of the leather itself tends to concave the razor, even if less than a hanging flexible strop.
Could you tell me, which radius I need to keep. I am planning to create a rigid curved strop and maybe use diamond paste to grind the convex bevel. Feel free to give me feedback on this idea.
Thank you for your time. I imagine it to be very complicated for a beginner to start with convex honing on a stone and keep it reliable.
You're comparing a flat bevel and a compound bevel as if they're equal, but the angle at the tip of the bevel is only one element of its creation - also important is a bevel's SHAPE, its apex refinement, and how much of its span behind the apex remains
narrower than the diameter of an average strand of hair.
If you only grind down the spine, as you suggest, and then do your work on flat references, yes you'll have a more acute inclusive cutting angle °, but NOT a hollow ground bevel. You lose all of the flexibility advantages that the hollow ground bevel creates. Only a wheel or wheel shaped device grinding in to the bevel itself can make a hollow ground bevel.
It is much more important for the bevel to have a hollow grind than to have a lowest possible cutting angle, in fact Böker of late has taken to grinding quite a bit more bevel concavity than in the recent past, and then they finish on a CONCAVE finishing stone, making the actual cutting angle tip LARGER than would be present if the bevel had been entirely created with flat whetstones, but because it is backed by such thin steel it still has all the crucial flexibility advantages. This is sort of like what Thiers-Issard has done for years; they first cut in their bevel with the two convex discs rotating in opposite directions (the greenish slate wheels with their broad, but slightly convex, sides facing the ceiling), then they refine that on a huge slightly convex slate bench stone (its diameter is longer than the wheels things' diameters), then they finish on a pasted strop which is gently concave, thus making a thin fine bevel with a tiny bit of convexity at its very tip, ideal for upkeep with a pasted strop.
Yes, certainly, a more acute angle is always better, *if the steel can hold up to it*, and that is an "if" which is heavily influenced not only by the metallurgy but more crucially
by the razor administrator's abilities to prep/lather, to stretch skin, to choose a low angle of incidence of blade to skin, and most crucially to strop well. It is a hard road to hoe and you're better off favoring the high side of ~15-18° and going for maximum concavity just behind that apex.
If you hone on a convex stone(s), you do not get a large flat zone on the spine, because you never touch the spine with any flat surface to grind it away. You do get a wide looking bevel if the razor's had previous time on flat or concave abrasives, but it is NOT a flat bevel you're looking at, it is a concaved bevel.
Don't combine flat honing and concave strop; combine convex honing and concave strop, or concave finisher as Böker does, if you want.
I don't know what the ideal radius is, because it changes based on the razor at hand. Generally, I've found with factory-new razors today that 5/8" and smaller razors have slightly larger bevel °s and 6/8" and larger razors have slightly smaller bevel °s. To avoid grinding upon the hollow grind zone behind the bevel but still get the most out of your efforts to concave a bevel, thus the ideal beginning radii are a bit larger diameter on the big razors, and a smaller diameter on the smaller razors. Shapes are expensive; in the Golden Age they did the whole thing on-the-fly with but their one Arkansas wheel, spine off the thing the whole time...we don't have that luxury anymore. I chose 3.25' radius as a good compromise for most, but in a perfect world you'd have many different shapes of stones and go by feel and watching the bevel's "shoulders" (the zone of bevel nearest the spine, that's where convex hone work will begin, not at the apex).
If a beginner only used very-nearly-cylindrical convex hones, vs quite elliptical hones, I don't see why it would be any more challenging than using flat hones. The reasons to avoid using a flat stone going across the hone's width don't change whether we're trying to obtain a flat bevel, or a convex bevel, or a concave bevel; the razors are never truly flat from end to end of their cutting edge, so if the whetstones are flat, by definition we must either grind away unnecessarily upon one side of the bevel [to obtain a flatter, thicker-tipped, and narrower width object from within the wider, thinner-tipped, and less flat object] or use the so-called "Rolling-X" stroke on the other
side of the bevel, which itself is doing much the same thing as making a convexity across the width of our whetstone, you are just reducing the size of your contact patch between razor and hone so that you cannot touch the razor twice with a gap in between them, the moment that a convex whetstone's effective diameter across the width is a smaller diameter than the effective diameter across the never-flat
straight razor that one continuous contact patch is assured.
hope this helps! Word of warning, though, if you dare to speak openly and objectively about this in the various shaving forums, the men there with their tiny mental phalluses will almost assuredly make you "walk the plank" if you are not already a long established member in their little digital gardens.
Agree, although I use a slightly more hacky method. Hang your stops as usual but stack up two strops together supported with a wool jumper from beneath, then strop the results produce a concave bevel. The shave is noticeably smoother, I also apply chromium oxide and aluminium oxide to the strop, a couple passes with a wax bar that's it. I also exclusively use European calf leather stops with metal rings and no other type. That might also influence the end result. IMO if you're concaving the bevel traditional strops tend to chip the edge, subject to correction of course.
sounds good
did u ever approximate your effective diameter by measuring your rise over the stopping span?
I have tried, extensively, to induce micro--chipping to see where such risk lays. So far among 40-50 razors I've only been able to get it off of two, an INOX stainless steel [which are not as flexible an alloy as treated] and the thinnest 5/8" razor I have, but only when reducing my stropping diameter to just 15" [at which point tracing the small arc becomes more challenging than at larger size wheels].
Kudos for ordering more lapping plates. I was concerned few would be able to have the means to find the same successes that I have.
I firmly support the use of these types of tools based on my experience.
hopefully they continue to sell as quickly as they did originally; str8rzrs is a small market and nobody can supply such a plate in a size good for big Ark shaping at a low price...just shipping to West Coast costs >$20 (it is 4lbs and bulky). Taking Arks off the table it could get much cheaper, but anyone who tries a big convex Ark will be hard pressed to sell such a thing.
@@thesuperiorshave
I recently communicated with a few gentleman in Europe who wished they had the same opportunity to have one of these shaping plates as I did.
Finally TSS has made a way for the average person to shape their own honing gear in the way ancient professionals did by hand.
The “experts” in perfecting the modern & less than perfect work arounds really seem to whine childishly about things they have never tried. What are they afraid of?
@@billm.2677 - Is the performance bump really worth it Bill? I use Jnats, so the shaves I get are extremely smooth. Still though, I am interested, as your enthusiasm and your videos seem to suggest you do in fact get a noticeably better shave. If the results were highly subjective, I'd be a bit disappointed.
All results are highly subjective, always.
But who among us has had their same razor honed from both their best flat stone and their local grinder urchin employing only their 20cm Pike hard Arkansas wheel as to make a fairest comparison?
Is anyone alive that's had that?
Has anyone in e-shavingdom even seen a Pike Arkansas wheel, excluding catalog drawings? We're sure they existed, no? If so, why did they once exist? Why don't they exist anymore?
@@Greyswyndir
Defining “worth it” is always a personal thing. For me the answer is yes. That answer is based on the change in the ‘shape’ of the abrasive only.
I can’t comment on abrasives I’ve not used. Jnats is one of them.
I’ve been working on shaping lower cost stuff so I could make a recommendation for someone wanting to dip their toe in the water before jumping in.
There is the argument to be made that the reason for the overall concave grind on straight razors (or any blade, but typically most extreme on a razor) is that it keeps the overall edge geometry thin, and due to this even when sharpened conventionally (typical “triangle”) that thinness behind the edge will be maintained for much much longer than if there was any less convexity, for a “lifetime” of sharpening, esp when compared to a flat grind blade
Yes, the issue of the ease of maintenance is detailed in printed pages 11-13 of the Norton/Pike "How to Sharpen" booklet linked/cited below.
In those 3pgs they use a chisel's profile/description as example, but all logic is the same, and they even specifically mention a "correct" *razor* bevel is concave. They also mention that it cuts better, because it is thinner-tipped. Also of interest in this old book is the inherent assumption one could easily return their hand tools / knives to a local grinder for reservicing, good luck with that now!
One could say the hollow grinding of a knife's profile itself provides ease of maintenance and increased flexibility, and hollow grinding *a bevel itself* provides further ease of maintenance [you're left with a tiny scrap of flat to top off w/o touching the remainder, vs immediately interacting with the whole of bevel should it have been set flat] and superior performance [this achieved through its lower inclusive cutting angle, its reduced thickness at a given distance behind the apex, and most importantly through its increases in cutting edge flexibility]
ia801009.us.archive.org/34/items/NortonPikeHowToSharpen/Norton%20Pike%20How%20to%20Sharpen.pdf
"Broadly speaking, there are only two ways of sharpening tools or knives:
1. By means of a grinding wheel, as in the old fashioned grindstone or the more modern tool grinder,.
2. By rubbing or whetting the tool on some one of the many shapes and styles of oilstones, hones or whetstones.
Grinding Wheels
Grinding wheels have two enormous advantages: First, they cut steel fast; second, they give the tool a concave or hollow ground bevel. This does not mean, however, that grinding wheels can take the place of sharpening stones, the use of which is explained further on.
Now about bevels: Look at the illustrations. The dotted line represents the flat surface of an oilstone or a hone. Fig. 1 Shows a cross section of a hollow ground razor; Properly, all hand tools and knives must be sharpened on this same "Hollow Ground" principle to do their best work. It is hard to see this in a knife, but easy to see it in any tool with a broad bevel, such as a chisel.
Fig. 2 is exaggerated a little to show how exactly like the razor is the *correctly* ground bevel of a chisel-both are *concave*.
Fig. 3 shows an *incorrectly* ground chisel. The bevel is *straight* instead of concave. This is caused by not holding the tool *in one unchanging position* on the grinding wheel.
One object of the concavity is that it makes a *thinner* shaped wedge, hence enters wood, etc., easier than does the straight bevel.
Another object is that this hollow ground bevel will last much longer than will a bevel like that shown in Fig. 3. Here is the reason for this: Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 show the hollow ground chisel and the straight ground chisel after they have been sharpened several times on the oilstone. Note that the hollow ground chisel (Fig. 4) is still concave. It will not go to the grinder for some time. But the other (Fig. 5) is now *convex* - it works hard and slow. It should go to the grinder right away."
This makes way more sense to me because your face isn't a flat surface, I'll be trying this with some of the new stone's I get.
Give it a go, it can only help. Removing 2.25mm of thickness from an 8" stone = a ~5mØ, excellent general use shape for a ~1000 JIS set-up stone. You have to remove that much from a perfect rectangle, and then blend to center, like a sculptor.
@@thesuperiorshave 😢 that end part like sculpture has me little a worried.... Might have to send in my dovo to you for a honing.so have a good reference to go off of
Subscribed to your channel and ordered the honing plate from EBay! This makes sense to me , and after watching a video from Bill M. On SRP ( also subscribed to his channel. Great demo!) I'm convinced to give this a try. One reason was I really butchered a Thiers Issard Razor trying to get good edge when it had a warp in the spine ( something I didn’t know about many years ago when first getting into Straight razors. Plus I enjoy sharpening and I like to try new things in search of a good edge. Thanks for your knowledge and for sharing. Cheers from Mike in Nova Scotia. ( Edit: by the way your convexing theory also make perfect sense when one thinks of sharpening clippers and scissors, in order to do that you have to buy prohibitively expensive machines that also have a convexed spinning plate in order to get these items back to a factory sharp edge. You cannot get them as sharp or cutting as well on a flat stone without doing this. ( ask me how I know..lol) and this is why most barbers send out their clippers and scissors to be re-honed..just a thought. M.) PSS. Please ignore all the haters and so called experts who don't want to recognize that You might be right and they are wrong. Their egos seem to be very delicate and any contradictions to “ their way” offends them. Too Bad!
thank u for the kind words!
Yes, I know of this costly spinning disc thingy, a man in Gainesville FL known for his understanding of JP-style shears has one, JP Plan I think he goes by.
That disc is not quite fine enough for this razor work, but I imagine the effective diameter can't be far off from the measure Dovo/Boker/Wacker/TI use with those 'platen' things, themselves a far cry from the standard of yesteryear when a 17-30cm dia. extra fine Arkansas/Thuringian wheel was used (with the aid of expert freehand spine holding, to accomodate for a complex hollow grind profile all within the small
Cool beans. I'll have to check out that book. When I first started out, watching your videos, I learned sound was key 👍
thanx
the very best source I've seen is an 1840s textbook for grinders, but alas only in German... However it said to make the bevel in 3 steps, most concavre to rear then less concave middle then flat at apex
You'll not find any textbook for razor production, in any language, which would support the notion of flat (isosceles triangle) shaped razor bevels
Nice 🤙
Forgot to ask, did you get a chance to try that pulled pork sammich from buccees?
yes I did, & it was asssss advertised!
I love that they only have certain foods at certain times, too.
February 2025 will make 11 years of wet shaving for me. 9 years of that was with straight razors and I've been honing for 8 years and I can without any doubt say that the concave bevel is far superior and more comfortable than it is with a flat stone. All you have to do is shave with a concave bevel one time and you WILL be sold on it guaranteed. The best example is to look at the flattening stones versus the diamond plates. They put those "concave grooves" in the flattening stones to break surface tension and prevent it from sticking to the stone you are trying to flatten while the perfectly flat diamond plate sticks to the stone. This exact same science applies to the shave with a concave bevel versus a flat bevel.
Indeed, excellent point sir!
I suspect the great majority on those forums either have not / would never try shaving with a quite-concaved bevel, or used a barely-convex stone and thought it was all the same as starting out with a lifted spine over a wet spinning 12" Pike Hard Arkansas wheel. Degrees of concavity matter just as degrees in chemistry matter.
The thing is, though, we've now managed to SELL over 640pcs of "the Jarrod plate", and ~200 various convex hones / films-on-shapes / etc. Within that sample size of 850+ units, how many regular readers of various shaving forums where this is always trashed exist? Easily 200 ppl, as conservatively as you could make it. If 200 various commenters were in these anti-convex-stone forums saying they'd tried it and disagreed, the tide would turn, and more razors would be sold and used, and razors might not perish in Europe. But there are just a few, a small enough number still to seem outnumbered by the forum regulars scared of anything "new" (which, in this case, is a very inaccurate way to describe this!)
Beards' prevalence in general is certainly a much bigger factor, but I do believe straight-shaving forums' obviously negative vibe contributes to the demise of razors from European production.
Nobody seems to resell these 'the Jarrod plate' or various shaped hones/abrasives secondhand, though, so you would assume they're all continuing to silently use them. Those people just don't understand how damaging that silence is to this business.
Nobody's selling many straight razors anymore, not Amazon not specialty shops, nobody. Thiers Issard has only two grinders to handle all their volume. Dovo was bought by a young smart guy 4yrs ago and had 10 grinders then, but I'd wager good $ they're not long for this world unless they can greatly diversify. The Bökers/Thiers-Issards each sell much much more cutlery not related to razors, where they can keep things going easily w/o str8rzrs, but what of the rest...Herr Aust will retire soon enough, some other names you know in the forums are just part time side hustles, and all the other makers like Ertan Suer and Koraat are 1-person shops (or 1-grinder + other less skilled workers in any case, like Wacker).
We are the lifetime where 2+-person "factory" razorworks perish for the first time, in some small part because we insist, 'officially', in published historical records on preparing their cutting edge in way their makers did not intend for the item they made.
What would you say to those who say "the home user didn't have super ultra mega sharpening stones, in multiple progressions, like we do. So, of course they could not get the bevel/edge as thin/fine/keen/etc as they could with the multiple wheels at the factory, but today the differences between factory finish and well executed home finish would be minimal"?
'minimal' is a relative term, not an absolute term
The point of the vid is that the makers of the razors intend for the bevels themselves to be slightly hollow ground, not flat, not convex. On the forums, the self decreed experts espouse the flat bevel.
Thus, to the grinder who actually made the tool and had to go to a school for 3yrs (after first apprenticing 2yrs full time) for the right to sell that to the German consumer, they ("every 'honemeister'") are doing it wrong.
As to how meaningful the difference is, I'd say it is something like the difference in a top quality MM cartridge vs an avg quality MC cartridge with avg quality step-up transformer. Could you listen to a Marantz TT15S1 (= Clearaudio) and be impressed by its MM cartridge, and happy forever? Certainly. But if you became quite familiar to a certain piece of music on a certain vinyl in a certain room with a certain set of speakers and amplifier, would you then hear a difference with a MC cartridge and step-up transformer being the only variable? I suspect so.
Comparison is the robber of joy.
When you remove about 10 microns from the rear shoulder of a typical 5/8" razor, that's more than 5% of the metal missing there... however fine and modern we make the apex ~1000 microns away from that point where the bevel meets the hollow grind, it will move more easily if it is missing that metal. You'll also increase the sum area of metal thinner than a hair, and no matter what the apex of such an area looks like, if it is thinner than a hair it enters the hair and if it is thicker than a hair it cleaves.
For some people that difference can be felt, for some not, and if u have no problems using a str8rzr as it is, pat your good fortune on the back! That doesn't mean it wouldn't feel better for you if thinned, and it doesn't mean some people are unlucky enough that if the bevel were not thinned no apex condition could solve it.
The easiest way to see a difference is to thin a well known to u razor finished on modern stuff.
FYI, for the bevel itself, back in the day of peak Victorian era excellence, they only used one wheel, not multiple wheels. The honing was commonly done on a single 7-12" dia. Arkansas stone wheel, foot powered & with a water trough. Quite obviously that was way too small a diameter for the spine to be anywhere near the wheel, so it was all freehand. Prior to the double wheel hollow grinder, hollow grinds were done with larger wheels one side at a time, and in Sheffield they would use a pair of such wheels to both establish and then refine a bevel, all freehand. But the lucky gent from then had a peak performance we cannot have, for he had hard Arkansas edge and superior bevel thinning.
Hello,
My familly are traveling sharpeners in germany since 1407 they always sharpen razors on wheels. We sourced our own natural stones. For general rough knife sharpening they used a big wheel of Wesersandstein and for Razors they had a smaler coticule wheel. They even thinned out the main hollow grind on razors with the rough wheel and refined the scratchpattern with a leather wheel and natural stone powder glued to it.
that is fascinating stuff!
Have you personally seen/used a Pike/Norton hard Arkansas wheel?
What was the thickness and diameter of the coticule wheel? Powered by your feet on a spindle?
For the hollow grind, what was the diameter? Have you used a 'sea cow' wheel?
thank you for your comment!
@@thesuperiorshave no i never used a Pike/Norton wheel, the big rough wheel my family had Was from natural sandstone and had a big diameter probably 70-80cm and was foot powered in a water trough. The coticule wheel was smaler i think 30-40cm it was with a grip you had to turn by hand and not in a trough but with a canister of water above it so that you can control how thick the slurry is. They also used a very fine grenish benchstone for the finishing that they sourced them self. And a peace of leather Glued to a piece of wood, they didnt used a hanging strop at all. But i have to say i didnt saw there Equipment myself what i know is Just what my father have told me. That is because the nazis confiscated all this stuff along with just anything they had and deported my family to Ausschwitz around 1942. after the war my grandfather used electrical machines to sharpen and many people stopt using straightrazors and used shavettes with disposable blades
@@thesuperiorshave i also didnt used a sea cow wheel, but i didnt know what this is
That's the term the Wacker grandfather used for a manatee leather wheel he had when we met 7yrs ago.
Interesting for sure thank you for the info. 2 questions please.
When you do this type of honing does the spine of the razor taking a convex shape as well?
And do you "flatten" the convex stones on this aluminum plate to keep the shape ? Obviously is not flatten the word but you get what I mean in flat stones we do flat them so in convex stones you keep convex them?
Thanks
The spines will not show big flat zones after repeated honing, obviously, because you're contacting the spine with a wheel shape, both in the direction from spine to edge and in the direction across the cutting edge. It still wears, but a large flat wear will be no more.
As to 2nd q., yes, I use my little invention to resurface and geometrically maintain my stones. However, German grinders and likely others have for decades shaped their stones by hand, like a sculptor. They didn't have my little invention. So, they prepare their bench stone geometrically as they wished, and then they shaped an inverse rubbing stone by wrapping the base stone in sandpaper and rubbing with the rubbing stone until you create the inverse in the rubbing stone, then u use that to both clean and keep shape of your bench stone
@@thesuperiorshave thanks a lot for explaining.
I'd like to point out a couple things. First, I believe you are misunderstanding the reference to Fig 2 a bit. The point on a wood chisel should be a concave shape however, the bevel they are talking about is the TOTAL of two points in that concave shape. Point A being the tip and Point B being the other end of the concave shape or as in a razor the edge to the spine of the razor. Second, If you look at the bottom of page 22 in the section called To Hone a Razor it literally states " Hold the razor perfectly flat on the hone. The
thick back takes care of the bevel." Also, the national archives also has a book called "Shaving Made Easy What the Man who Shaves Ought to Know" from 1905 that has really good info on honing and shaving. It also states place the razor flat on the hone.
I do not believe that Pike was referring to the concaved hollow grind section of the straight razor when they used the term "bevel", but we can agree to disagree.
*professionals* (which is not the target audience for what pg 22 says, which is in direct opposition to the sentence you're conveniently ignoring that a correctly ground razor bevel, as on a chisel, is concave) had always used wheels to hone. The idea is the razor arrives to the end user sufficiently concave, they keep it up (while thickening the bevel % with their flat hone), eventually the flat % of the bevel's too much and it needs 'razor concaving', and they then returned to a professional most likely using a Pike Arkansas wheel for the finest edge.
You are just another person in a long line that hasn't tried any serious bevel thinning for themselves and is going in lockstep by the forum dogma. The 1905 book doesn't say it is for *professionals*, as in grinders, etc. Find me any book about razor grinding that says to produce a wholly flat bevel - you won't find one, and I've already found at least four publications from the 19th century all specifically mentioning the wheels to be used for the final edge, their diameters, etc.
*professionals* used/use wheels, home users flat stones, before I created the anti-shape there was nobody that ever tried to make a shape which kept a stone as a repeatable wheel. This is new terrain.
Wait a second.
Question; Does that mean that historic barber hones and consumer bought natural hones - the overwhelming majority of which were flat - were only ever meant to fix / polish / hone the tip of the edge, not the "entire bevel", or was it expected that the home user would grind off the concave bevel and create their own flat bevel?
Also, a razor's edge and spine are designed to wear at rates that would allow an edge to maintain a reasonable bevel angle, so what does that mean for home - flat stone - upkeep, when the razor has a concave bevel? Did manufacturers expect this "mix and match" approach vis a vis commercial and domestic sharpening, and wouldn't you have to 'wear / grind off' the old concave bevel to create a new 'flat' bevel on the flat sharpening stone you had at home ?
Also also, the only old convexed stones I have ever found in the wild came from old cutlery shops (two in Britain and one in Holland, all from small towns), which would suggest that people in 'the biz' would try to maintain the manufacturers standards of a concave bevel, even at a local level.
So many potential questions...
Great and fascinating video, Jarrod.
Thank you.
~2011-2013 we had a German fellow who would drive to France, acquire coticules from boot sales, ship to us and we split the profits. There were many paddles mounted in wood and they were all slightly convex, so I think in some regions people knew back in the day of the benefits to thinning the edge.
But generally, if you look at the linked Norton 1934 book, razors were delivered new or professionally resharpened with a symmetrical version of figure 2 for their bevel profile... then the home user slowly makes the tip of that bevel thicker and flatter with both the use of the razor and topping off with their flat stone, causing a thicker triangle shape to start taking over the bevel profile's span. At some point this was felt enough by the home user to cause the shaves to be unsatisfactory, at which time their local with a wheel would reestablish the thin profile.
I have to agree , as I test 5years ago I bevelled a small chisel ,it cut beautifully after , then I forgot all about it as I'm mostly a metal worker .
July of this year I've taken up straight razor shaving and I suspect same logic applies , my shave today was not comfortable , razor refreshed on flat diamond spray strop was too harsh .
But it's all that's mentioned ! Flat stones flat strops ?
The strop being a wheel is just as beneficial as the hone, though for some xtrmly thin razor/steel combinations they may benefit from a hanging strop's tendency to convex the tip (to prevent micro--chipping if the grind's super thin and the steel not flexible enough).
@@thesuperiorshave , I really like Filly 14 but used diamond spray on a paddle strop...now it's too sharp and a nasty harsh shave 😞
have never personally loved any edge w/ diamonds involved in its process, for me it is coticule#1 Arkansas#2 but Ark gets closer so I use it as first preference. I don't think they (Arkansans stone) can be surpassed for the combined minimum performance of smoothness/sharpness, others are smoother/closer for me but only in comparatively larger concession in the other attribute.
@@thesuperiorshave thanks , I appreciate your help, no more diamond spray for me !
yer welcome
it isn't to say diamonds can't work for some (otherwise they wouldn't sell so long), perhaps ardent skin takes it well, but my skin's senstive and cuts easily
I may have missed it. How did you determine or which diameter of wheel do you feel is best 3’ or 4’ ?
there are many factors beyond pure shaving comfort - tracing an ever smaller stationary object well requires more skill, thicker stones, & more labor/abrasives to produce them. Shorter diameters also make wider bevels that some will not like visually. But 3' will not challenge a well tempered razor, even in mid 19th c. some factories set the whole bevel to a 12" wheel and then finished the tip on a flat or gently convex (long diameter) benchstone, still others used just a 7" wheel in 3 phases, freehand holding spine off stone for 2nd step / finishing. For the purposes of producing a single tool I must consider practicality to produce the plate, too (short diameters require more metal)
@@thesuperiorshave thank you for the quick response. It’s amazing how knowledge and tradesmanship gets lost so easily. It’s a shame and now keyboard pirates are always there to tell us different.
They certainly know best, & now what I'm doing (once the incumbent professional standard) is now the dark arts in our topsy-turvy time.
What will it take for this to be reversed for shaving's betterment? If the words of the world's largest abrasives mfgr can be tossed aside in an echo chamber, how can the trend be curttailed? I've honestly no clue.
I will attest to your honing. I bought a blade from you recently and it is wonderful, far better than my prior flat honed blade.
my opinion is that the relatively smaller variances in performance of particular finishing stones [when compared all as wholly flat isosceles triangle shaped bevels] is easily surpassed when compared to sny reasonably competent finishing stone set up as a concaved bevel, and I base this belief on the observation that when (at age 48) I reshaped my longest owned coticule (that I'd given up on shaving myself at age 40) it suddenly felt plentifully sharp for my beard
it didn't get sharper(finer), nor did I improve as a hone adminisrator - it just changed in feel on my face due to the geometry it only then imparted once shaped as a ~7x2m ellipse
I had watched this video before but went back to watch it again with more attention and I can’t believe the part about honing on the tiny portion of the stone thinking that gives you a similar result… some people are just… stupid I guess 😂
yes, good old steve56, you would think after parroting that line for years and years now, showing his little pictures of his Japanese scraps of rock narrow enough to touch a small % of a razor edge or using the corner of a stone the same way, that he would find something else to do with his time. But, sadly all he has is time, and not enough to do with it. This is why his collection of unobtanium is so incredibly extensive and pristine, it is all an attempt to find something to do.
Yet however much time steve56 man has, he will not *meaningfully* shape a stone, or even use the little wooden blocks with lapping film. Instead, he'll show another one of his little pictures we've all seen in these many threads where a piece of float glass has a very small concavity, as if that is akin to a 6" stone shaped 6.5'Ø with ~3mm of rise in the center that is plainly obvious to a human eye w/o any rulers or flat things nearby needed in the picture. For many readers, they actually will believe him. Sure helps the hobby, don't you think?
There is a new thread on the badger and blade forum yesterday and steve56 is asking [in regards to comparing vs a convex stone] as he has already done many many times before, "why not just thin the spine?" to get a lower inclusion angle.
Ignoring that you're permanently altering the razor in his example, the real reasons should be plainly obvious to an engineer (which he claims to have been, or still is); the reduction of apex angle is only a minor factor. An isosceles triangle shaped quantity of metal area and a similar sum quantity of metal area with a steeper angle at the rear and a flatter angle at the apex (like a bowl-shaped ski slope, they don't rate them by the easy part at the end they rate them by the cliff at the beginning!) will not *move* the same way to force, so the responsiveness of the steel is changed.
Furthermore, the area extending *behind* the apex which remains narrower than let's say 70 microns (for an average human hair) is NOT the same, the second example has a longer dimension where the steel is narrower than a whisker, ALL of that steel enters in to a cuts a whisker. Any part of the steel which is narrower than a whisker is relevant to the concept of entering/severing the hairs.
We also enjoy H Brad Boonshaft's expert chime-ins, too, yet another true master like Keith Johnson and all the rest, those who will never meaningfully try to shape their bevels and instead will show us stones with the tiniest convexity to them as if they're the same thing, as if shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet are just the same, as if a tennis ball and a volley ball are all just spheres you play with, and on and on the mental gymnastics go WITHOUT ever trying for themselves, so that they would not need the "blind taste test" [that they also will NOT try] which they claim will refute the idea of the concave bevel. The one thing they'll always refuse to do is set up their bevels with a wheel 7' or less and see what happens.
Razor makers DID once upon a time make big concavities in factory bevels, and for re-sharpening. The reason manufacturers don't make the razors with a large concavity to the bevel is only because they don't have those Arkansas wheels anymore, or any other similar wheel 12"Ø and super fine and slowly rotating and water cooled to set in and refine their bevels. If they had such, they would surely use them. Synthetic stones are not hard and fine enough for this task.
The 'platen' discs they all use, with the abrasives surface spinning parallel to the floor, set in bevels on blunt razors in under one minute. Unfortunately, even the little lapping film on a stick method's going to take a whole lot longer than that. But perhaps new make straight razors' sales will get so low that they would have that time due to lack of demand, and if they had it because of a dearth of sales, I think they might use such a method.
People on forums don't understand how small the razor 'factories' are, as an example Thiers-Issard whom my wife and I visited in May makes likely the second most in the European world to Dovo, and they only have two full time grinders and only one other person hands-on the razors. Dovo has less than ten people. It is a tiny business now.
@@thesuperiorshave Yes I think I was that started that thread asking a question to other convex honers if they took their 6 foot wheel all the way out to the apex. JPO gave me a great answer but somehow the conversation in the forum quickly changed from the original point. "as if shooting a bullet and throwing a bullet are just the same" this made me laugh but so true 🤣
It seems like the reason convex hones and honing isn't popular is simply because it's difficult to create a hone in the shape of a wheel. It's much easier to buy stones and maintain flatness then it is to buy flat stones, shape them like a wheel, and then maintain that shape. Maybe if more people had access to razors honed on a convex stone, they might see the value in using a wheel shaped hone? Long story short, it's not as practical or convenient, so people stick with flat hones. Is the shave really that much better? I don't know. I do know that buying more specialized equipment and putting more time into honing just to get a minimal increase in comfort or keenness may not seem worth it to most people. I have a curious nature, so at some point I will try out a convex hone.
Opinions vary. Some might even be that the use or forged straight razors is a waste of time.
The variance in shaving comfort, which is obviously a subjective unquantifiable metric, was nonetheless important enough to all producers to use wheels instead of flats, and important enough that none other than the world's largest abrasives manufacturer took the time to specify, in print, that a razor bevel should be concave and not flat.
And yet devotees in forums dedicated to the task, who conceivably place an extreme esoteric importance upon the nature of their razors, strops, & whetstones, will continue to resist their geometric voices of reason within... to win a battle for keeping things simple, or as they were.
I would submit that it is easier still to just use a cartridge/safety razor, and for that matter some foam from a can. I also don't think special tools are needed to shape hones as wheels because I've seen them hand shaped this way in Japan to an excellent level of precision. But yes, certainly, flat is easier - and dished (concave) is easier still, why complicate things!
To me your argument is akin to saying I already own the best engine, so what do I need to worry of keeping precise air pressure in my tires. It all matters; the abrasive making the scratches and the alloy and temper and size and grind profile of the razor, as well as the *shape* of its final cutting edge. It is silly to deny what's obvious, and it is obvious that a thinner piece of a given steel (if of sufficient metallurgical design and kept to specific task to perform without structural failure) enters wood or fish or vegetables or hair shingles more easily than does a thicker piece of the same steel. Also stands to reason that flexible steels will flex less if made thicker and flex more if made thinner. So if you want to knowingly leave hair entry ease and flexibility advantages on the table becsuse you're happy with your incumbency, that is to be applauded; contentment for those of obsessive nature is always the truest brass ring.
@@thesuperiorshave - I'm not arguing, I'm just pointing out what seems to me is an obvious truth, that people tend to follow the status quo, and on shaving forums, people love their Poobahs. I'd like to try a convex hone myself. Maybe if you ever get that order filled by Dan I'll get the chance.
Indeed.
Dan's has had that order for 5+ mos., so I wouldn't hold out much hope they want our money, no matter how earnest their phone etiquette.
Why not simply hand shape a couple AliExpress Special waterstones +2mm of curve for 200mm length and try them out vs a Gold Dollar or other beater? I'm sure they'll immediately impress anyonr more concerned with their shaves' quality whilst alive than their stones' girths after their death enough to convert all their hones soon thereafter, or maybe just keep one finisher flat. That would cost $30 + time or so, you don't have to patronize this business.
People become defensive/threatened about this topic b/c they think you're saying their razors' edges' condition isn't good, which is not what I'm saying. I'm only saying they could be thinner and more flexible, no matter their chosen abrasive. Mathematically and metallurgically, those are facts. They're objectively true. The rest is subjective. So if folks wish to become offended or threatened, they should do so against a position of "your razors' edges could be thinner and more flexible than you make them now without the razor function suffering in any way, but they aren't"
Aiming for convenience never was a factor for me adopting use of forged razors, it was something I'd endure any inconvenience for any steel-on-skin benefit.
@@thesuperiorshave - I was thinking about shaping a coticule I have. It's about 7.0"x1.68" and I don't really use it. Making it convex would at least give me a good reason to use it. I just personally like wider stones, and a sub 2" stone just isn't my cup of tea.
That sounds a good idea, just check your work with a ruler going straight across the 1.7" axis in addition to down the 7", you don't want gaps that way either and just the tiniest of slope keeping the center line the thickest will suffice. Take ~1.75mm of strata from the two 1.68" wide endcaps [starting with a flat reference] and blend that work to the midpoint, gentle correction on width, and you'll have a wheel of about 15', certainly enough bevel concaving that anyone with experience with forged razors can tell the difference while shaving.
I, too, struggle with narrow hones, even when they're shaped to the ~7.5x2m axis and the contact patch is
This is how religious cults get started.
I've debated a bit with myself about commenting on this, and from a razor sharpening standpoint I'm pretty indifferent. However I did as you asked and downloaded the book you're referencing.
While I'm quite certain you know more about sharpening razors in actual experience and in theory than I do. You are in point of fact misreading and misunderstanding that book. Which is made quite obvious by figure one.
The concave shape *hollow grind* of the razors is shown to be back away from the edge, the edge itself is shown to be flat on the dotted line and is consistent with the spine of the razor. In other words the edge of the razors angle is set by the spine. They aren't concerned with razors in this book particularly, they are using the hollow grind of a razor (well known at the time) to illustrate it's usefulness for other tools such as plane irons. Everyone keep in mind that norton is primarily interested in selling abrasives. Including but not limited to abrasive wheels.
Figure two is illustrating an edge like is found on a chisel or plane iron. Which absolutely would benefit from a hollow grind (I do own hand planes and chisels) the hollow grind from a wheel enables, for one thing, much faster sharpening because you don't have to worry with honing so much metal. It also allows a lower angle and hence thinner edge. Just like honing a hollow ground razor is faster than trying to hone a wedge razor.
If you'll kindly reference page twenty-two of the book you'll notice they show honing the razor on a flat stone and say to that the spine takes care of the bevel.
Now it may very well be that you have discovered a technique to enable a keener shave. If so kudos to you sir! However there is most certainly no special knowledge about razor honing in the book that you referenced, and with all due respect, the manner in which you've titled this video and how you speak of others in it is embarrassing considering you completely misunderstood what those old dead guys wrote.
We can agree to disagree, human, for if your statement was correct Norton/Pike wouldn't have written "Fig: 2 is exaggerated a little to show how exactly like the razor is the correctly ground *bevel* of a chisel - both are concave." They would not have added the word "bevel". The words matter; the drawing is (greatly) intentionally simplified, just like drawings in books of razors' hollow grind-ness do not normally show four to six different effective diameters across the span, or the belly's presence for that matter.
From the professional perspective of a new razor leaving a factory 'shave ready', I ask you to find any printed historical text in books either made for grinders' study or describing such which says a razor bevel should be a flush isosceles triangle field (like the "Fig3" example).
You won't find that, because it doesn't exist - razors always had a wheel form do the vast majority of the edge creation if not the whole since the advent of hollow grinding, and if a flat (or even concave) stone was used on a hollow ground razor, it was only as a final step. Wheels are faster and make a thinner edge.
The later parts of this Pike manual, where the flatness of the stone and razor edge/spine are emphasized, are for the end user, who would NOT be expected to have an Arkansas wheel {which they made and sold at the time, prices only upon request}. They would home keep their razor as close to {EDIT FOR TYPO} "fig4" as possible, working only the small area of the bevel( that's been flattened after being worn down through shaving), and eventually they'd resharpen and it still wouldn't be comfortable, the flat portion % becoming large enough to necessitate 'razor concaving' as it was known, meaning a wheel shaped form was again brought to the bevel. Both professionals and end users alike would be expected to use such a catalog.
And what do you have to say of the 1846 German grinders' textbook "Polytechnische Mittheilungen" where it details to use a three shape, three stone method, the goal being for the last step to be so hard/fine/flat a stone that, given how thin the area has already been made by the prior steps, the loss of acuity/keenness from reverting to a flat ending was minimal, and that only certain barbers, grinders, and razor sharpeners were known to use wheel forms through until the end?
My source on this stuff, originally, was Thiers-Issard's prior owner, who told me in no uncertain dismissive terms "Americans will never understand or accept the convex hone". Presuming you're American, you're just proving his point, made looking down his nose at us for our stupidity.
All the Solingen parties do it, too, but they don't want to talk about it because bringing it up will hurt their sales to Americans, they'd rather the issue went away. Even Böker writes about the notion in 2022;
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/KPKP5952.jpg
Böker didn't write "..., which is a perfect triangle form" or "which is slightly convex" or "which is always kept flat" or just not bring it up. They specified it has a slight hollow in the edge itself.
I sure wish I had a magic eraser to remove the early naive discussions started by me those many years ago, when informing Dovo & TI's end users that we (that includes me) were all sharpening them wrong, according to Dovo and TI in any case. I didn't know I was about to be told - again, in no uncertain terms - just how little those producers actually knew!
You certainly did not disappoint! As I previously stated, you absolutely know more in practice and in theory than I do about razor sharpening.
Keep in mind I'm not here to debate you on this, as stated I'm pretty neutral on the concave bevel subject.
I only took issue with the source material that you used in this video. I am not and did not say you were wrong about the concave bevel of the edge of a razor per se. But that your evidence in this video was absolutely lacking, even with the words on the page you quoted which I did read before commenting originally.
I had hoped that you had more to base this on than the book you referenced. And you have shown me that you do, I'm intrigued at least. Also I have no difficulty comprehending a convex hone or the edge it would produce.
I just thought you did yourself a disservice with this video, you have much more evidence to offer on the subject. That is excellent, but unless people are made aware what good does it do them?
Thank you for your response, I admire your passion for the subject in taking the time to reply to what some would consider a troll such as myself.
I've gobs more proof/evidence of the practice than in this video. Remember, everyone's attention spans (including my own) dwindle daily.
Besides, you can list as many as you want, and (just as the dismissive Frenchman who owned Thiers-Issard declared to me 12yrs ago) Americans will never understand or accept this. They'll do anything to dissuade themselves of the importance or wisdom of intentionally creating anything on a razor bevel's geometry but a perfectly flush 2/3rds of an isosceles triangle. They can't take it! A razor's bevel must be entirely flat, and even better if its spine is kept nice and clean with tape!!
Many other various pcs of information regarding the correct-to-the-manufacturers form of a hollow ground razor's bevel have been shown in prior videos, some shown here;
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/0923202105safefortsssite.jpg
{very old British example detailing how wheels were used, prior to the hollow grinding machine's invention}
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/0925202101safefortsssite.jpg
{seems these old guys are touting the thinness of a razor edge for goodness knows why}
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/021020222.webp
{these old guys are touting 'razor concaving', which - obviously - they *only* meant would increase the concavity of the hollow grind zone, the bevel excluded from such (as per Pike)}
tinyurl.com/jt59cw5u {German only}
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/farny.jpg
{this device intends to sharpen all the way to the edge with a convex mechanism}
We'll just have to agree to disagree that my [literal] reading of Pike's writing from the early part of the booklet deems Pike to be stating that a factory-ideal straight razor is to have a concave *bevel* [not just a concave hollow grind] and the things on page 22 are for the end user of 1934 [who would not be expected to be able to own/operate/maintain an Arkansas wheel which requires far greater skill, investment, capital, and space], while your interpretation of their writing eschews the importance of the word 'bevel' in the aforementioned paragraph in favor of the illustration's interpretation, or simply interprets their use of the word 'bevel' to mean what we refer to today as the hollow grind zone of a razor, and that their advice on page 22 is what matters for sharpening razors at any level, professional or amateur alike.
I am quite used to 'trolls', btw, though I wouldn't term your actions worthy the moniker.
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/patheticglitterbombsentbypaymentfromamaninTennessee-scaled.jpg
no penis glitter bombs were ever sent to me prior to all this convex hone shyte, and I have zero presence on any social media beyond pimping this tiny business. And yet only AFTER the convex shaping plate came along did I suddenly start receiving penis shaped glitter bombs, cylindrical glitter bombs, and 30-50 various deliveries of cash-on-delivery pizza/Chinese food/etc [I created a shaping mechanism as you can see here thesuperiorshave.com/product/toolsforhoning/
You can`t ague with the facts with such written text on convex, these people new what they were doing back then and many many test would of been done be for going into production.
As you have done many hours possibly months into the research and shaping your honing stones to a convex using your home made plate you taken into production ,
Could I pick your brain and ask ` when using your blades on your convex hones ,
Does the hone wear down the the blade in the area you state , the Zone of increase thickness between thinnest Zone and cutting edge where you have drawn a red triangle area illustrated on the picture you shown on the blade,
Because if it does then that`s undermining the strength of the blade,hitting the thicker area as well as the bevel.
If it does (not) touch that triangle illustrating the thicker area of the blade just be for the bevel, and it only touches the spine and bevel nothing else` then the convex stone has to be so accurate, to hit only these too points ,
how often does the hone that`s been shaped convex have to be placed back on the plate to be reshaped,to keep it so accurate.
I presume the complex part that gets thicker would serve several principles one to give better cutting edge due to reasons you've stated` one being where its thicker strengthens the flexing of the blade and when a wedge is so big it with full hollow ground ,might help to prevent warp, Due to the thin part above if it carried on getting thinner all the way to the bevel the edge might be to acceptable to warp as well,
how often u reshape is heavily influenced by abrasive strata, an inverse shape rubbing stone helps greatly in prolonging use before reshaping
The diameters used here are chosen so that the work occurs in the bevel itself. Certainly, all removing of steel = reducing blade durability. But we are doing only one task for this tool and for that task this reduction in durability has proven of no consequence. I've tried deliberately to meaningfully fatigue the razors, on many dozens of blades, the only two I got anywhere with that 1) one is stainless steel 2) one is 5/8" and does not have a shoulder and perhaps did not have the very best outcome in regard to its hardening procedure
Flat honers are almost as annoying as flat Earthers.
why r they so dedicated 2 task and r they gonna b happy when new make European str8rzrs are no more?
Ironically flat stone honing is something fairly new so it's not like it's some traditional way of honing and sharpening that's being threatened. You can see it in a lot of medieval and later art that they used wheels to sharpen and hone swords and knives.
it (flat stone honing) is a local (to shaving forum fauna) tradition since at least the mid 2000s (AD)
very traditional
the whole concept and your diagrams are flawed, if they made the bevels on the outer diameter of the wheels then yeah but by placing the razor on the flat side of the wheels they are doing what you say is wrong, either way you want to look at it they are putting flat bevels on the razor before it's ever sharpened
didn't know a wheel had some flat boundaries, please detail
@@thesuperiorshave dude you put the link up "thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/thiers-beveling.jpg" so if they're bevelling on the flat "side" of the wheels instead of the outside diameter(is that easier for you to understand as wheels are 3d objects) the bevel is the same as doing it on a flat stone, if the bevel is set using the outside diameter then your right but after sharpening shit for a living for 50 years there is no wrong or right way, not everyone does shit the same way
@@thesuperiorshave and i only wanted to buy a stone
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/annewheelconvex.jpg
It was the prior TI owner who first told me those greenish French slates are convex, twelve years ago over the phone.
But there above in screenshot, you can see the Dovo representative confirming their stones are also made convex, and there is a YT vid in the factory we made (the inlay pic is from early in that vid) where you can hear their former managing director saying about the convex stone.
Don't go by "you thought it looked flat" in these videos to decree that is so, when it is perhaps curved +2mm over a ~28-30cm grinding surface, that is easy enough to miss but the razors know the difference. The tool is prepared as a grinder makes a big telescope mirror, on its 'flat' sides, until it has the finished shape for working.
A similar geometrical concept was employed by this contraption; thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/farny.jpg
Everyone can wrong or right way *their own tool purchased for their own consumption* however they like, it is your tool! But are not the *manufacturers* still allowed to define what is | is not defective/correct treatment of their own productions. Many times there is only one right way for the manufacturer.
I'm saying TI's owner told me they were curved as in this picture (added some curves to try and show better the idea);
thesuperiorshave.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/thiersbevelsettingdiscsareconvex.jpg
these things are curved, the big Pyrenees bench stone {which is curved too, but less so}, then just pasted strops, that's how they did it when he ran things. The idea was to produce a bevel where further sharpening on flat field abrasives or pasted strops (preferred) will only touch a small minority of the bevel span, rather than having a perfect bevel in abrasion or overall geometry. Keep things going this way for years and you only consume that original zone of bevel in front of the extra thin zone, it is foolproof as long as you like pastes (which the French do).