Speed honing....

OK, I eluded to playing around with a speed honing technique in the "Hone of the day" thread, so I thought I should post what I'm playing with here.

This is not a method to produce a traditional edge... this is for lazy or busy people, like myself, who can hone the old fashioned way, but just can't seem to find the time to do it!

With that out of the way, here's what I do right now:

1 layer of tape, set bevel on 1K Naniwa Professional (utilizing the brown turd slurry if needed) until the bevel is fully set and then joint (often called *kill* on this forum) the edge so it's straight with no burrs left behind.

I then remove the tape and reset the bevel on a cleaned 1K hone and bare spine until it's good and sharp again.

Now I add 2 layers of electrical tape and go straight to a 12K Naniwa SS or a 16K Shapton or one of my natural finishers and hone until I have a tiny but smooth and sharp secondary bevel equal to what I can produce the regular way. It shaves the same as a traditional honed edge, it's quick to touch up (just remember to use 2 layers of tape) and seems to work just as well for my daily shaves.

It can also be a handy trick for those razors you can't seem to get shaving sharp and you're wondering if it's the razor or you? You can quickly get a great shaving edge to prove the razor is fine, then go back to doing it the old way until it comes together for you as you now know it just needs more time on the hones.

I would never suggest this method for honing a razor for someone else as it would be impossible to touch up quickly without the 2 layers of the same tape. But for the lazy, short of time, kind of guy that I am.... it works pretty good!

Yes, before you say it... I AM aware that when my secondary bevel gets to maybe half the width of the 1K bevel, I will have to start over again and spend more time on the bevel set... but, it does go quick on the brown slurry and not having to use all the intermediate hones, makes for a quick day at the hones to get back to shaving sharp.

I should point out that at this point in time, I ONLY do this with my daily, cheap and grungy, razors... not my prized possessions.


Regards

Christian

Christian, maybe I am lazier then you :) but in my days before I could consistently hone a razor I used a variation of this method incorporating one layer of tape and a coticule. Then I moved like you to set the bevel on a 1k and 2 layers of tape and a nice barber hone. A very cheap way of getting a shave ready razor. Thank you for sharing with us, if we can help one guy struggling we've done our duty.

Thanks for sharing your approach with copious qualifiers.
;)
I too am lazy, but find my times with the stones and steel something I enjoy.
Not to be rushed, or a stress riser in my life.... so whatever cuts your jib I suppose.
:beer1:

Christian do a quick search on

"One Stone Honing"

Lynn and I both did quite a few Vids on almost the same technique, just slightly different but the same principle,,, it really does work :)

I like your idea of using a Secondary bevel, that should make the whole process even faster :tu

Sounds good Christian, I may just try that as I am fairly lazy when it comes to honing. So lazy that I am testing the upper limits of what a strop actually can do. If this works well, I fear we may get a spike of mid range hones for sale on our classifieds. Nice post.

If you reallly wanna be lazy its amazing what you can do on a worn sanding belt & then a looseleaf buff loaded with CrO tho I haven't done that in over 20 years.

Interesting....

Recently I went back to the full nagura honing method.
It takes what feels like hours but the feel of the blade is unique..
I hone once per week now but boy do I look forward to the shave.. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JOB15

Interesting....

Recently I went back to the full nagura honing method.
It takes what feels like hours but the feel of the blade is unique..
I hone once per week now but boy do I look forward to the shave.. :)

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Nagura are very slow, and require a few dilutions to produce good results.
Grab a good fast suita and it will very easily bridge your 1k to finisher gap. All of my suita can erase 1k stria within several minutes time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mainaman

Nagura are very slow, and require a few dilutions to produce good results.
Grab a good fast suita and it will very easily bridge your 1k to finisher gap. All of my suita can erase 1k stria within several minutes time.

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A suita?
I go from my 1k straight to jnat with tsushima then botan and so on

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JOB15

A suita?
I go from my 1k straight to jnat with tsushima then botan and so on

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A Shinden Suita, Ohira Suita, Okudo Suita, Nakayama Suita, any will do, mine allow me to go from 1k to finisher in a few minutes. After that I use tomonagura and done. The whole thing does not take more than 15 minutes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mainaman

A Shinden Suita, Ohira Suita, Okudo Suita, Nakayama Suita, any will do, mine allow me to go from 1k to finisher in a few minutes. After that I use tomonagura and done. The whole thing does not take more than 15 minutes.

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For a good suita, a couple of minutes are enough after the 1k, but the edge won't be shave ready, or at least it can be refined even further. The drawback is... the thousand of $$ you have to pay for a decent one, with a good shape, and clear of inclusions (not the thin, almost fake red veins, the ones that do hurt the edge).

I was wondering, after setting a bevel with a tape, remove it, then progress to your finisher with two layers, wouldn't be friendlier for the razor to use one instead of two on finishing? I doubt it will take much more time for the same results.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vasilis

For a good suita, a couple of minutes are enough after the 1k, but the edge won't be shave ready, or at least it can be refined even further. The drawback is... the thousand of $$ you have to pay for a decent one, with a good shape, and clear of inclusions (not the thin, almost fake red veins, the ones that do hurt the edge).

I was wondering, after setting a bevel with a tape, remove it, then progress to your finisher with two layers, wouldn't be friendlier for the razor to use one instead of two on finishing? I doubt it will take much more time for the same results.

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Yes, a suita will not produce a shave ready edge, so after I am done with mine I go to a finisher with tomonagura.
One does not have to spend a ton to get a suita that gets the job done. Full size stones with features are expensive, but smaller boring colored ones are not and they will do the job fine.

Pretty much unicot, or one stone honing. I don't use it a lot, but it makes honing quite easy and fast. It's so easy if feels like cheating.

Pithor. It IS cheating!

That said, I've been working on this nondescript, no maker determined, only mark BobH and I could really see was Bros.... It's a faux frame back grind, cheap scales and while it hadn't seen much time on the hones, some pitting got really deep near the spine so it'll never be pretty, but there is a lot of steel to hone before it gets close to that pitting, so I intended to use it for daily shaving and not for looking at. Well... the idea of using that brown turd to get things going on a 1k Naniwa Professional really worked well and I finally got the bevel set on it. I did the cheat with 2 layers of tape, and everything looked good... except I just could not get the dang thing to my level of acceptable sharpness. It shaved, but just not that easy. I took it back to my 8" Kiita 4 times, lots and lots of laps.... the edge looked good under 40x , but it just would not take a great edge. I all but shrugged it off as cheap steel, but out of the blue I thought, why not toss it on a 16K Shapton for a few laps.... just for fun. THAT woke the edge up! It's not as polished as I would like... perhaps I'll need to take it for a spin on some crox, but wow... this must be quite hard steel compared to all my other razors, and I've got a few!

So yes, this is, as I described in the original post, a cheating way to get a quick shaving edge.... it is NOT the proper way to hone a razor, but for daily, personal use, it works fine for me. It also lets you get an edge on a otherwise cantankerous razor that seems to defy anything you do to it, so you can at least prove to yourself that it WILL take an edge... you just have to work at it more.