Honing a NOS Filarmonica.

Hi Tony regarding the bevel it really all depends on what razor your are honing, now a very well cared for vintage full hollow can retain a very small bevel for ever if they are well cared for and honed correctly with a taped spine, now that old Mappin & Webb you sent me was a wedge type blade and had seen a fare amount of honing through the years so even though I used two layers of tape I still went along with the original bevel which would naturally be wider than a full hollow, in the past when I have owned old wedge type blades with a large bevels I've taken them to me buffer with a 180 grit wheel then removed the existing bevel and started all over again with 3 or even 4 layers of tape to get the smaller bevel that I like.
 
The bevel width is primarily dictated by two things:

1 the blade geometry in terms of spine width to blade width.
2 the grind i.e. How much steel is behind the bevel.

As Jamie pointed out, a wedge type blade will produce a wider bevel once you start wearing the blade width away, whereas an extra hollow ground blade such as Filarmonicas will maintain a small bevel because the steel behind the bevel is not getting thicker.

Generally speaking, razors are made with a blade width to spine width ratio of about 3.5 to 1 or something like 18 degree bevel angle. However, even though you can maintain this ratio by using tape, once you start trying to re-set a wedge type bevel, you realise just how much material is being removed and, consequently how much wider the bevel becomes.

It's actually much easier to thin the blade down i.e. make it more hollow, and then do a bevel set.
 
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