Thread: How did barbers hone a wedge in the olden days?

I just hope those in attendance at said meet don't waste valuable teaching/learning time on such a silly endeavor. Nothing will be accomplished by it, IMO.
Meets are to share and learn/teach proper techniques and materials. Rubbing stones against one another creates friction, to be certain. A pile of friction has been generated here.
Why bother. Let us do what is known to work well. Not what causes controversy. Better to teach proper technique than to theorize what may have been done in a jungle back in the day with no other resources. Some are letting their pride get the best of them here, IMO.
While entertaining, it surely serves no other purpose. JMO

I actually do find this interesting if a bit inane.

I got to thinking about how to best test this at the Denver Meet. My first thought was that we needed to start with hones that were not flat, most likely dished a bit. Now I'm thinking it would be better to start with lapped hones and see if we can even keep them flat. As soon as they deviate from flat its game over. Now can anyone suggest what an average random motion might look like. What percentage of overhang relative to the hone size would be appropriate? Should we give the hones to a newbie who has no knowledge of this thread or the 3 stone method and thinks that rubbing two stones together is the proper way lap?


Assuming failure, I'm curious about the mode of failure.
I imagine both stones starting to go concave due to the fact that the centers would be rubbing more time than the edges and then one of the sides 'wins' and the contact surface starts going spherical. Like I said, I do find this interesting.

I do agree that if it is getting in the way of teaching it should be nixed. I'm planning on staying out of Glen's hair while he is teaching anyway. Too many cooks and all that. So unless we split into multiple groups or there is a stone I just have to try I may have some free time anyway.

Take note also - you can use an abrasive medium such as SiC loose grit between the stones to speed the process. The same thing occurs rubbing the two stones together with nothing but water as they wear each other away. With only the stones it just takes longer, but the end result is the same.

The way I see it, doing this at the meet will end the discussion, not prolong it. Victor's questions are why I suggested the proponent of the two stone method be the one to do the work... This way he can't cry foul over someone "doing it wrong. "

Originally Posted by bluesman7

Should we give the hones to a newbie who has no knowledge of this thread or the 3 stone method?

I wouldn't give a newbie a task I am not willing to do myself. They really aren't there to do dirty work, but to learn about wet shaving.

Not sure your test proposal is good, though. I can purposefully make two relatively small hones (such as the ones we use for honing razors) spherical by rubbing them together in the vein of making a small spherical mirror like Glen posted. You just have to lap in a manner that emphasizes the boundary effects i.e. with a lot of overhang. I.e. there is a subset of hand lapping motion that does end up with spherical surfaces on small hones and the radius of the sphere is a monotonic function of the hone size as well as more weakly dependent on the 'lapping motion'.
Lapping with a machine is probably different and I haven't calculated yet whether you can create these spherical surfaces without the biases particular to hand lapping.

But that's alright, I believe I understand the disconnect and I'm pretty much convinced it's not going to be resolved because I am not interested in becoming a highly skilled machinist, and I don't think you are interested in mastering college level math and physics. So, I will never have the credibility that you confer to people with your skill set and you won't have the tools to argue the underlying principles.
As this has been an argument about principle it can only be settled by providing the correct math and physics.

In the end I ended up with a moderately interesting problem on the speedup from the three-piece lapping out of this, and if I manage to solve it even better.

Originally Posted by eKretz

Take note also - you can use an abrasive medium such as SiC loose grit between the stones to speed the process. The same thing occurs rubbing the two stones together with nothing but water as they wear each other away. With only the stones it just takes longer,"

The more I think about this the more I'm convinced that starting with flat stones will be the fastest way to test it. I think they will go out of flat pretty quickly. Starting with flat stones will also be less wasteful.

We can start with "Who thinks they can keep these stones flat while rubbing them against one another?"

Originally Posted by eKretz

The way I see it, doing this at the meet will end the discussion, not prolong it. Victor's questions are why I suggested the proponent of the two stone method be the one to do the work... This way he can't cry foul over someone "doing it wrong. "

Uhm, I've said repeatedly that I know how to avoid the problem you are having and I will attempt to do this the next time I have next to me two hones that are likely suitable for doing it in a reasonable amount of time (for me this time is 15min, maximum 30min).

We could offer a prize to the person who can keep the stones flat, so that there is incentive to really try. I think this could be a lot of fun. If it seems like it will be disruptive it could be an after hours activity.

Originally Posted by gugi

You seem to be forgetting the problem. It is to prove that two hones can be made flat by simply rubbing them together without using a third one. You're among the ones who insist it can not be done and that there is an instability towards curved surface.
If you're right you'll always end up with a curved surface (the phase space of those is infinitely larger than the phase space of the flat surface which is even metastable) and a single example of ending up with a flat surface would be sufficient to disprove your assertion.

I agree with this with the caveat 'no references allowed during the lapping' We are even planning to start with flat hones and just try keeping them flat.

Gentlemen, angry men, stupid men, and women.

Talk about off topic, there are 17 out of 21 pages here that are gloriously erratic. I love the interchange of information, and my mantra is "content over comment". But I got to say that some fellows post like they are just padding their “Postings” tally.

Essentially what we see here are fellows who have commented on the use or practices of something that they have not actually tried or tested out themselves. Honing razors is less about theory and more about doing. Content over comment. I am not going to single out any one person, or more, who has just thrown out someone else’s hands on experience, aka Empirical Evidence. We have just taken 2 ½ weeks and counting, and over 200 posts to prove my exact point.

In the golden age of wedge razors, most barber were using concave hones.

Apparently the greatest minds in Europe had not yet discovered the 3 Stone Method of lapping stones because they only described a 2 stone method (post #42. Perret describes on page 8 how to get a hone entirely flat. He tells the reader to use pumice to flatten the hone and if necessary to eliminate any scratches left by the pumice by rubbing 2 razor hones together. No sandwiching a pumice between 2 razor hones.)
and I think we are close to exhausting the fact that rubbing two stones together will not really create two flat stones. Going to a local grinding stone is not a guarantee of ending up with a flat hone either no matter how romantic an idea that sounds.

We all prove it everyday to ourselves, honing a razor on a flat hone will dish the stone more and more with each pass. If you think that this is false I challenge you to stop using your DMT’s for a month.

With all this in mind I challenge anyone here to try and hone a wedge on a flat stone with no tape, and to try and hone a wedge on a concave stone with no tape. I especially challenge those here, lowly members and Administrators to do this so that they can speak ye or ney as to benefits of doing so, and to allow them the benefit of speaking with empirical knowledge on the subject.

I here and now withdraw the polite wording in my post #59 because if anyone claims now after these 220+ posts that barbers in the 1750 to 1840 did not use concave stones, then you are hypocrites.

Remember, this original post was. HOW DID BARBERS HONE WEDGES IN THE OLDEN DAYS?

If this post and this thread are removed or deleted I think that a sham is afoot.

With my best regards,
Alex

P.S. If a couple of you fellows don’t have 3 Norton stones of the same grit to test out the 2 & 3 stones methods, ask Lynn, he’s got to have a few you can borrow.

One follow up point.

It was suggested that 2 stones could flatten each other. I think that they can do a fairly good job, but not truly flat. No one here seems to have 2 similar stones to prove this one way or the other, let alone 3 similar stones. Here we live in an affluent world, we can order stones. 225 years ago they could not. To assume that each barber had 2 or 3 similar stones to lap together places a great burden on the rural and isolated barbers back then who probably felt lucky to own just one good stone. 2 stones dosn't quite do the job, can you imagine a poor itinerant barber carrying around 3 matching Belgium stones while traveling on foot or horseback in rural New York, South Africa or Greece or Japan.

Most if not all barbers had in their kit concave stones. How they used them by lifting the spine or using a cat gut spine sheath of juditiciously using all of the hones surface varied for sure. The only constant in this whole dialogue that as Glenn pointed out goes back years on this and other forums, is, the fact that most barbers used concave stones back then. The second constant is, that none of you have ever tried to replicate the honing challanges that wedge users were forced to incorporate into their system during the 1700s when barbers were isolated.

Alex