Last February I was in Texas in a gathering of razor makers. It was a place for people to get some insight in various aspects of razor making, and I was helping people make their first razor, explaining things and doing a couple of forging demos along with Howard Clark and Mike Blue.

One of the things that came up was: how do I grind a razor the last bit of the way after heat treatment. There are many ways to do this, and I won't say that my way is best. This is just what I do and it works for me. One benefit it has over other methods is that I get very small bevels on my razors which can be a bit harder with other methods.

I was the only one of the people there who ground edge down, and one of the science-y guys wanted to film this to make a tutorial and this is the result. One of the benefits this has is that the sparking and even more important the sound of grinding tells me just where I am in relation to the edge. It takes some practice to get good at this, but by looking at the sparks and listening to the sound I know exactly what is happening to the part of the blade I can't see.

 

 

What grit belt, and surface feet a minute are you using?

 

Thanks for sharing this!  I got a good feel for this, just by watching you!  I have my grinder set to rotate the opposite direction.  I do like to watch for the foil when I'm grinding edges!  

The belt in that video was 220 grit. Personally I like to use 120 grit ceramic after HT but at the time I had the choice between 60 or 220. 220 worked but was a bit slow. SFM I don't know It wasn't my machine and it had no numeric setting just a turn dial. Fairly slow.I run my belt at only 10  % of full speed at that stage during hollow grinding and I'd say 2 bumps per second on a 72 " belt.

72"x2per second=12' per second x 60 seconds in a minute is 720' per minute.