Nice little mail call. These three waterstones expand me options. I only had 3k and 10k waterstones so far and i was curious about how a little more range and resolution would feel.
Also, this dull-like-a-butter-knife Thiers Issard frameback. It's my first frameback, and it was a bitch to hone (I did that two days ago). It just would not pass the packing peanut test off the stone. A real mystery to me. In my limited experience, I always manage to get the edge sharp on the stone without stropping, if I used a light enough touch and alternate the sides frequently, ending on leading edge strokes. But not with this guy. It wouldn't even shave arm hair without stropping.
In my mental model, this means that the steel is ductile and forms a burr, but I'll gladly be corrected by any Honemeister who actually knows what they're doing😅
Either way, I have up after it somewhat push cut into the packing peanut, but was a bit disheartened when I compared it to the pushing-into-a-cloud sharpness of other straights. We'll see how it goes. Either I'll figure it out or maybe the steel has lost its temper and is a paper weight now?
I like the Naniwa Advance stones for razors. Good value IMHO. The binder in the Advance loads up easily, so I always recommend a good amount of slurry on each stone until you get to the finishing stage.
I would not use Honemeister and knows what they’re doing to describe myself, but here goes:
Since you have already honed quite a few razors, I'm leaning towards steel temper as the problem. An easy way to tell is to go back to the 1K stone and don't come off of it until it push-cuts a packing peanut. It should take a little effort and the peanut may make a sound when push-cutting, but the razor should cut. Sample cuts from heel to toe should feel the same. If the razor does not push-cut, then try to inspect the edge with a 25X loupe, or equivalent. The texture of the apex relates to the abrasive size of the stone, but temper issues typically prevent the edge from taking the smooth form that you expect. I suggest using Sharpie, also, just to have a visual check on overall geometry.
If the steel is soft then half strokes on one side of the razor will easily form a burr that you can feel with your fingers. The burr will be on the side of the razor that faced up during the half strokes. With soft steel, this burr is easy to flip (with half strokes) from side to side, and it is very difficult to remove with alternating strokes on the stone. Here is a video that talks about feeling the burr. Go to about the 29 min point.
Hope this helps!
Thanks to for the detailed answer!
Not sure I understand what that means. Are you referring to the little spots of black steel gunk that someone build up?
I did that. And I get to push-cut sharpness, the weird thing is that it doesn't get much better on finer hones, unless I strop.
I'll try that next. But what's the solution if I confirm there's a burr? hone-strop-hone-strop?
Generally, if you can't get an edge to refine as you move to smaller-sized abrasive, that's an issue with temper. Literally, the steel is too brittle and won't support refinement beyond that point. You can force it to be sharper, but there's no edge retention. I've seen this with knives many times.
In some cases, you can remove steel from the edge and get back to "better" steel. I'm talking about removing a fair amount of steel, though. Personally, I'd try that with your TI. I would use a 140 grit or 200 grit stone when I do it. If you have a diamond flattening plate, you could use that. For your TI, I'd start by removing ~0.5mm from the edge, perhaps. You can freehand it, but if you place the spine on the stone, make sure you tape it. In the meantime, I'd suggest looking for a Japanese frameback that uses Swedish steel. These are probably amazing shavers - close to the Weck. This type of razor is on my radar, but in the distance atm.
Yes.
Except that stropping makes it sharper, though! This points towards ductile steel forming a burr, rather than brittle steel chipping when refined, no?
I'll explore both directions, starting with thinking about better burr removal
Could be. A steel that's too soft to take a good edge is still one with heat treatment issues. If you're stropping for sharpness, removing burr and/or shaping burr in that way, the resulting apex won't be very well-formed and uniform from heel to toe.
Yeah, that sounds right, unfortunately