Razor Bevel Setting, Sharpening, Touch-Ups, Conversion and more...
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2024
- What is it that we're really doing when we hone a razor. I discuss a few topics that seem to keep coming up in emails and my social media.
SEM pics courtesy of Science Of Sharp Blog scienceofsharp...
Wow long time knife sharpener, just bought my first straight razor 2 days ago. Just wanted to say this makes allot of sense. Much better then other videos. Thank you sr
vinny nero You’re very welcome Vinny. 😁
This is the most informative video I’ve found yet. Most video have guys going back and forth on a stone without really explaining the angles.
Thanks Simon. It is some advanced concepts but drives me nuts to see all the misinformation.
Very nice video! I usually never go below 8k either on anything I've honed myself. Those 10+ hone sequences drive me crazy. I can usually take an antique store razor from dull to ready with 4 hones 1k,4k,8k, finisher
Thanks for sharing wonderful and simple techniques.🙏🏻
Best explanation of razor sharpening I've found. Especially helpful in conjunction with your "How to Maintain Your Straight Razor on the Cheap." Thanks Doc!
this has been very helpful. I was just asking myself this today when i went to "touch up" my 5/8 gotta that had gone a little flat and put in on my nakayama asagi and it made it worse! Had to take it back to re setting the bevel and all is fine but I couldn't understand why it needed it so soon. Now I know. great stuff, thanks
So it seems to me you could break the process into three distinct stages... one is bevel setting... usually done on a 1 K... two is refining the initial bevel set 1k to 12k or however many K you want to take it to... third stage is stropping cloth , felt , whatever and leather... So where I do take your point, and I think you made it very well and the argument you make is quite clear, and does help to clarify what is going on, it is largely a semantic argument. What most people call a ' touch up ' or a ' refresh ' just means " I didn't have to go all the way back to 1 K... ( to reset the bevel ) so I am in stage two... beyond what stage 3 , (stropping type stuff can handle anymore).. i.e. a ' refresh ' or ' touch up ' .. (a few passes on an 8 k then a 12k) or whatever, not ' regrinding ' a new bevel.. so it's really more a matter of what you call that. Technically yes, I call it generically ' sharpening ', but razor peeps call it ' honing ' . To me ' honing ' has the connotation of ' more refined ' than , just ' sharpening, but again, semantics, right??? But typically what you hear is, ' set the bevel ' or bevel setting, distinct from 'honing'. It's interesting if you look up the word ' honing ' it has the meaning of ' sharpening ' but also has the meaning of ' refine or perfect over a period of time ' ... as in to hone a skill, but I think both definitions actually apply, when you hone you are refining and perfecting the existing bevel that has been set, refining that scratch pattern. Just as an aside, I think saying ' heal ' the surface is also very weird terminology, you are not actually ' healing ' anything you are removing the high ridges of the deep scratches left by 1K. Like eroding two mountain ridges exposing the valley below. There is no ' healing ' going on. Funny term, that is somewhat confusing and deceptive, I think. Great videos , very thought provoking. Shaking off some of the misnomers and misconceptions really helps to refine your perspective of what is actually happening. Sorry for my horrific punctuation.. lol.. Thanks
Well said Bruce!
You bring up some good points. If your edge has already had its bevel set and was shaving well and is starting to pull a 1k stone is creating unnecessary work. I usually use coticules for touch ups and in my head what the stone does is thin the edge out, never really hitting the edge. Yes setting the bevel is an over term. Sharpening sounds good to me.
Entertaining as always.
Great video Matt.
Thanks so much for taking the time to produce and share mate.
Well guys, i sent my razor to Dr. Matt and bought his mantenaice kit. Here some considerations/review.
I asked for a polishing and for the smoohtiest/shapest razor he could get. My razor is an old vintage friedr herder abr sohn square 77 which i bought on e-bay.
He said by e-mail that i have been done a good job and reached 90% of the objective. Unfortunatley, at least for me it wasn’t a confortable shave. So i asked him to do the rest.
I really do not know what this guy did, but “the remaning 10%” changed the shave drastically. I never had a shave that sharp and smooth. Not even with a new mach 3 and a gilette fusion. Besides it came with a mirror shining like a new one.
Everybody should send him a razor and i will tell you why: to serve as a comparison parameter between a sharp razor and your honing skills.
Moreover, i live in Brazil and the US dollar is more than three times expensive than the local coin, so it was kind of expensive to me, but guess what.... Worth every penny.
Lastly, if you will do so, do not like me and send him lots of e-mails (sorry Dr. Lol). First watch carefully all of his vídeos (yes, all of them). Next read the questions, answers and comments below, and only then IF is still remaning any question, e-mail him! He answers in a couple of hours.
I didn’t not tried the mantenaice kit yet but as soon as i use it i will write some comments.
Now i know what a good edge look likes i’ll put my coticule to work and will honing my skills.
Sorry for the long review but a fine work deserves it.
Thanks a LOT, Dr.!!!
That's awfully nice of you Bruno. Thanks for the kind words.
Kind and true, man. Stay sharp!
You have phenomenal explanation skills, it is a fantastic video👍
Thank you sir and I'm glad you got it. They are some more advanced concepts.
Hello Doc
Nice video and excellent explanation as usual, you are the best one to clarify something through YT when it comes to wet shaving... The difference between sharpening and setting the bevel is excellent, some say they set their bevels on Botans, while they only sharpening the razor.... Remove chips or correcting the geometry with a Coticule, Botan or Washita takes unrealistic long time...
I totally agree with you on touch ups, a small portion of the steel must be removed to restore that beautiful pointy edge... The edge not only dull with use it degrad too due to stropping and the thin edge is prone to corrosion as the steel is exposed to the elements soap, skin, water...etc .
Now here's what I don't agree with you, stropping does not make the edge angle wider... stropping is basically remove the toothness and feather edge (burr) .... On other words it clean the edge.... When you hone an edge and you fail the HHT then strop it at some level especially with Coticule your HHT will improve.... Because you have removed the random metal on top of the cutting edge, not because you have increased the angle of the edge... moreover stropping between shaves realign the edge and clean the oilness that skin leave on the edge which restore some of it sharpness for the next shave..... To see stropping effect more clearly, hone your razor on 1k check it under the microscope and strop it then check again... You will notice big change on the edge not in the angle but on the toothness as the unstable steel is the removed, and that can be mixed up with creating a wider angle as the edge will look shorter which can make the angle look wider but in fact that is the real angle of the edge
The comfort is a result of removing the tiny sharp random feather edge that cause unpleasant experience.
Thanks again for the great video.
Regards,
Thanks for the nice words.
If you look at the SOS website, you can clearly see that as you microconvex the edge, it loses height at the apex AND will increase bevel angle a slight amount. I don't think the increase bevel angle improves comfort but it does have an effect.
I'm not convinced that anyone really knows exactly what happens when we strop but the effect is undeniable.
Cheers!
+drmatt357 SOS is a great blog, but at the end it one guy effort not NASA whom conducting the tests... :) So for the results might be off by half a micron, and he apparently used a pasted strop which will convex the edge automatically.
Stropping concept is very basic
Imagine stropping as combing hair, after a hair cut(honing) you comb your hair and pieces of cut hair (burr) start falling, and when you comb your hair in the morning you basically realign it and remove weak and dead hair.
In one of your videos you showed two pictures of an edge honed on a stone and the same edge stropped on the same stone... The stropped edge was clearly cleaner, with unpasted strops the same happens only on minimum scale because no abrasion involved only removing metal by burnishing and stressing it... Like when you cut a hanger wire by stressing it.
When i polish stones on my lapidary machine, the final step will be on a clean cork or a hard cloth without abrasives, only to burnish.... The effect is like when you lap a hard ark using coarse great like 80 then sharpen a knife on it with pressure, the stone surface will become relatively reflective even though the knife steel is less harder than the ark, but the toughness of the steel and the pressure managed to break the brittle peaks of the valleys dug by the abrasive, which what we call burnishing.
Hope any of this will make sense.
If you still need to clarify more just try finishing the edge on a coarser stones magnify it, and check it again after stropping..... A coarser grit will exaggerate the effect for you to observe it
Regards,
Just what I needed. Was getting hung up in some of the semantics and the interchanging of words than shouldn't have been interchanged.
Thank you this was a great explanation!
I have been struggling with sharpening my razors, this is helping thank you. That said I may still have to send them to you to be saved.
Good to see you back again matt.
Being someone who came from single bevel japanese knives, I've always thought of the bevel the same was you do.
Incredible, Dr., i was about to ask all this questions by e-mail. After watching your coticules' videos i solved all the questions about coticules i asked in my last e-mail.
By the way, i never saw a videos of yours talking specifically about pasted strops and compunds. Now i know why! Personal preferences. LOL
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Thanks Bruno. My very first video, The Secret To Creating The Perfect Straight Razor Edge I use sprays and other mediums to create an edge.
Yeah i see it now. You look like the same.
Excellent video
Thank you very much!
Very nice! I agree with you and i love the car analogy... On my razors the "refresh" usually happens on a jnat ... One full dilution from a nice slurry to murky water a boom... Rdy again... 5 mins
That'll do it!
Great video ! I love going back to this again and again 👍🏼
In my mind, I need a visual for this basic foundation. Every time I put the razor to the stone, I have these pictures in my mind of what I'm doing.
Really interesting stuff that I've never heard before. Thanks from Texas. May the Lord Jesus bless you for sharing this information.
Brilliant and informative as always Dr. Matt. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us :-)
Great video as usual drmatt, Just my 2 cents here...always clean a razor well after using fruits or vegetables to test a razor as evaporation of acid from most metals will cause rust.
Acid baths remove rust but left to oxidise without cleaning the said piece it will quickly rust again.
I know you love this type of info lol.
I agree with what you was saying abput the poor beginner looking at the nut with 12 stones wasting away metel needlessly. But i can see how some people really dont care about wastimg a pefectly good razor too soon and going to extreams with a million differenr grit stones. And such may be perfectly educated with it and compleatly understands hes ruining the life or the razor but just loves the process of aharpening so much they go nuts with it .i have certainly been there for sure and ruined my fair share of knives .i also make knives so i do it a lot luckilly i learned quick and now i am somewhat proud of what i can make blade wise i like to think about long term preservation .i am hopeing my first ever non conventional in this case straight razor in the post today .so im nust going around watching any videos in relation to razors shapenening them and how to shave with them tips and tricks like your shave cloth grate idea by the way .thanks for the videos nice to see educated people share tjere knowledge with others.
Thanks Nick. I also started on knives. I use a fixed angle rig because my free hand stinks.
drmatt357 iv been stone sharpening since i was 8 and im now the wrong side of 30. Admittedly its only really the past t years or so iv actually reached a point where id say i can fix and sharpen pretty much anything. But im far from an expert and im always learning. Anyway thanks again
great job explaining it.
Great vid thanks very much for this one helped me out a lot
Nicely done Matt! I think I've seen that video where the guy goes back to the 600. Sadly, that type of stuff can really mislead a new guy. Curious to know whether or not you really need that many strokes on the linen and leather to achieve that micro convexity. I don't say that to be argumentative. I just know there are some who do not strop very much. I myself have been playing around with less strokes when stropping and still have been having great results. I also use the vintage fire hose strop and then a horse strop. I've been doing about half of the numbers you mentioned. Again I don't mean to say I'm right or your wrong but I'm curious about how little it takes to achieve that micro convexity.
I use that many only off the stone the first time. And that is coticules as they are not as refined. After the first time or prior to every shave, I go only 20/40. Could you do it with less? You may but it comes down to the feel you like. That's what I found with my testing and best feel to my skin. YMMV
Really educational and interesting video Matt! Finally understand what the strop is doing, it didnt quite make sense to me. Still quite cant get the angle right on my razor though. Ground the shit out of it, tried taping the spine or taping the edge. Seems to have straightened it out on one side but cant get the other side right (or getting the edges to meet). I dont understand how it was honed from factory, i tried with tape, with two layers etc :D Its a hart steel 6/8 and first sr i owned and tried honing.
Bravo well said
Very helpful, thank you.
Great video. I'm confused though. If stropping is rounding out the edge, doesn't that mean it is becoming less sharp and we wouldn't want that?
Fair question and I may not have been totally clear. Stropping doesn't round the edge, it creates a shoulder or round a few microns down the blade from the apex.
The tip is still super pointy and stropping even further makes it more so or "keen".
Great video!!
I used to "refresh" the edge going back to the coticule which is around 8000 grit, followed with the Escher, and the ILR.......but lately I am using a Franz Swaty barber's hone after every shave, and that in essence takes away the need to go back periodically to the stones. All I do is doing 5 passes (edge leading, followed by 10 edge trailing passes) and the edge is as good as it was right after I used the stones. This keeps the edge very sharp, and so far I haven't used the stones for the past 3-4 months now. I wonder how long the edge will last, when using a barber's hone after every shave?
Generally speaking, does this mean that a razor that shaves arm hair but not closely shaves the beard would need to return to the 8K stone, or what?
Can you define a finishing stone?
From my experience on honing and stropping and the results I see I do have to ask this question.
Dr. Matt, does this perspective of resetting vs. "touch up" differ with the grind of the blade?
No, not really. A heavy grind may have more metal at the edge and spine but the principle and rules still apply.
Ever sub in a lapping film for 8k? Could get lapping film and ILR slate for about $60 total.
I have never used film but heard from a lot of people that they are a good alternative to stones and you save some cash.
then why strop? What grit stone is a finish 10k? So in order to sharpen I should use an 8k then a 10k then I am ready to shave?
I would go to a 12K but a 10 should work but ALWAYS strop prior to a shave.
Why not just strop on leather or linen on a flat surface? To lessen the convex edge and make touch up possible.
Also, put very little pressure when stropping to lessen the convex as well.
VanDelosSantos Good question. Even if you strop with your linen and leather on a flat surface, there is still a compressibility to those, therefore will still micro convex a bit. Not as much as a hanging strop tho.
But the thing is, I don't want to eliminate the micro-convex edge. I believe it adds to comfort of the shave. I've tried stropping with the leather and linen on a flat surface and the edge was harsh and grabby.
Thank you, I have a hanging strop but I have never stropped on it while its hanging because I believe that it will tend to pull a bit when I use my razor. I will try to use it while hanging this time to be able to feel the difference.
10:44 😂🤣
Interesting now what do you mean by a finishing stones?
Richard Torres - the final stone to touch your razor before you put it to your face.
@@drmatt357 yes I know which would you recommend on a budget.
@@richardtorres6317 - This should cover it all Richard: ua-cam.com/video/cXVW_S6VaBw/v-deo.html
People should call it what the knife guys call it... "setting the edge"
Funny you say that. People say that you "sharpen" a knife but you "hone" a razor. That's silly. You use a hone to sharpen the razor... or make it pointy. Technically, when you sharpen a knife, you are setting the bevel because you create the bevel at the edge by holding the knife at a certain angle. A razor tho has the bevel preset by the width of the blade and the thickness of the spine.