Thread: My first 2 Kami's

Got my first 2 Kami's today! Excited to get them honed and start shaving with them! I am surprised at how small they are as they always look so big in pictures! Ha!

Tosuke:



Norio:

Small is good in Kamisori......hands down prefer the 150mm size. Small, quick, agile shaver. Hope these work out for a great shave and hard not to use at least once or twice a week in the rotation.

I don't know if it's the picture or not but the first one on the nonstamped side has something strange going on with it. If that is how it really looks it might be past it's prime.

The second one looks better.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

I don't know if it's the picture or not but the first one on the nonstamped side has something strange going on with it. If that is how it really looks it might be past it's prime.

The second one looks better.

No it's just poor lighting/reflecting

The omote is extremely worn on the first.

It is worn but it is an old razor. Sent it to get honed so we will see what the experts say. The seller, whom i trust, believes there is life in the blade. If anything it is a great collector's piece.

After looking over some examples I've noticed that the Omote will occasionally look much more worn than it actually is. I'm assuming this is from stropping, or possibly honing, polishing up a portion of the blade that still has some 'curve' or an edge to it and isn't lying flat against the polishing/honing/stropping surface.

I recently picked up a junker kami on ebay to practice honing and found the shiny portion of the omote did not match up with a perfectly flat whetstone (even with significant pressure applied to the blade). After some serious work I found a 2mm thick line form near the edge of the blade where the stone was making contact with the blade (the original shiny portion of the Omote being much larger than this). I concluded that the razor I'm using still clearly has tons of life in it, despite it having much of the omote polished and looking extremely worn out.

This definitely isn't always true (probably the exception to the rule), but hopefully it is in the case of your first Kami

If there is too much wear on either side but especially the non stamped side it's going to change the angles and make honing alot more challenging. Much more so than a western razor with heavy spine wear.

It was challenging to hone but the biggest issue was all the chips and flat spots in the edges, once I got past those they both honed up just fine..