Thread: What is the more important stone ???

Well, last week I filled a gap between 6k and CrOx with Chinese 12k... And I also honed a J.A. Henckels razor that I mentioned earlier in my posts...
I did something inconvenient in my progression...
And that is, I did 60 strokes on 1k, 30 strokes on 3k, 30 strokes on 6k, 80 strokes on 12k, 100 strokes on CrOx and 160 strokes on leather...
My point is that I spent the most time on lowest and highest grit stone without paying much attention to those grits in between...
And the whiskers were begging for mercy when I was cutting them of my face...

The thing is that I always liked to spend some more time on 1k stone in order to set the bevel correctly rather than to go up in my progression and polish the crappy set bevel...
It is just my point of view...

You referred to acquiring "more" stones. In that context the higher grit stones would be more important.

You can get a single (ok, maybe two) coarse stone for setting bevels. It's going to work just fine for setting bevels on any razor. How coarse would be a preference thing for time, how much of what kind of work you do, and possibly additional stones for reasonable steps up to the mid/high grits.

Let's say you do a decent amount of work with fixing chips, getting past swiss cheese edges, etc. You might pick a DMT8C (325 grit). It's a pretty good jump to a DMT8E (1200 grit) so you might want the DMT8F (600 grit) to go inbetween, but it's a time thing. Maybe you rarely deal with chipped blades and setting bevels on a DMT8E is just fine.

Bottom liine is that you only need one bevel setter (maybe 2...)

On the other end the finishing/last stones effect shaveability. A much more subtle thing to tune. Certain blades/steels will yield different results on different finishers. So having different finishers will be more important to the end result.

So factoring in both the end result attainable and cost/effort getting there, the high grits would be more important to have a variety of.
Yes, it's critical to have a bevel setter; but once you have that, then having more finishers should be your focus.

OK, I understand the want/need to have many finishers, really trust me, I do

But in all actuality the exact same thought process would occur with the bevel setters...


You basically would have the same choices as you would at the finishing stages as in harder, softer, feeling stones for different razors even differing grits... different sizes too....

Or is this just another form of HAD and the never ending search for just that much better shave?????

Hmmmmm maybe you could do the same in the middle sharpening grits too
Yep it's just HAD setting in...

Originally Posted by gssixgun

OK, I understand the want/need to have many finishers, really trust me, I do

But in all actuality the exact same thought process would occur with the bevel setters...


You basically would have the same choices as you would at the finishing stages as in harder, softer, feeling stones for different razors even differing grits... different sizes too....

Or is this just another form of HAD and the never ending search for just that much better shave?????

Hmmmmm maybe you could do the same in the middle sharpening grits too
Yep it's just HAD setting in...

Glen, If you want to get another bevel setter YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION. (there, that should be all the justification you need)

The bevel setter is a ROUGH cut. You can whack most ANY blade on your bevel setter and it's going to produce pretty much the same result in the same amount of time. Whacking it on a different stone in the same ball park grit will produce the same results in the same amount of time. You can't say that for the finishers can you?

Here, try this

As a premier SRP honemeister, master razor restorer, SRP moderator, SRP newbie mentor and all around looked up to guy, you should see it as your OBLIGATION to have and use a full array of stones in every grit.

1) People are going to ask your opinion on what they should buy. You should have experienced them all.
2) People are going to ask your opinion on how their stone compares to some other. You should have experienced them all.
3) It's going to pay off in your business. "If you own any stones or are considering buying some, let me know. I will hone your razor on the same stones so you can see the results you can expect". You should have them all.
4) more?

Now go forth and purchase!

Originally Posted by Quick

Glen, If you want to get another bevel setter YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION. (there, that should be all the justification you need) Thanks man hehehe

The bevel setter is a ROUGH cut. You can whack most ANY blade on your bevel setter and it's going to produce pretty much the same result in the same amount of time. Whacking it on a different stone in the same ball park grit will produce the same results in the same amount of time. You can't say that for the finishers can you?

Nooooooo That one I would not agree with, there are as many differences at the low end as the high maybe more even....

At the finishing stages all you are doing is polishing the edge that you already built... Keep the strokes light and even and pretty much the stone does the work for you, how far you take that is a personal preference..

At the bevel set is where you have to work with the stone to create the foundation of the entire edge.. Again keep in mind we are talking edges that need this here, otherwise you would not be down this low in grit...
That was sort of what I was getting at in the very beginning of this thread finishing is the easy part of honing setting the bevel is the hard part yet most people concentrate their money and effort on the easy part.....

Originally Posted by Quick

Here, try this

As a premier SRP honemeister, master razor restorer, SRP moderator, SRP newbie mentor and all around looked up to guy, you should see it as your OBLIGATION to have and use a full array of stones in every grit.

1) People are going to ask your opinion on what they should buy. You should have experienced them all.
2) People are going to ask your opinion on how their stone compares to some other. You should have experienced them all.
3) It's going to pay off in your business. "If you own any stones or are considering buying some, let me know. I will hone your razor on the same stones so you can see the results you can expect". You should have them all.
4) more?

Now go forth and purchase!

I shall I shall LOL

Originally Posted by gssixgun

That was sort of what I was getting at in the very beginning of this thread finishing is the easy part of honing setting the bevel is the hard part yet most people concentrate their money and effort on the easy part.....

How so? You grind away until the edges of the bevel meet. You do it as fast as possible balanced by how long it takes to polish away the deep cut scratches. Is there more to it?

Originally Posted by dylandog

Bigspendur, I think when it comes to those wavy bevels that nevertheless get sharp, it's less likely that a chimpanzee set the bevel than that a chimpanzee ground the blade in the first place. Subtle warps and other anomalies can make a wavy bevel unavoidable even for a honemeister. But as you say, it's usually purely cosmetic. This is because for all intents and purposes a bevel's a good bevel – wavy or not – so long as your two planes are meeting in a line. Putting a good bevel on a warped razor sometimes requires a narrow hone, sometimes a rolling stroke, etc. but if your honing strokes are making contact all the way down to the edge and all the way along it you've done a good job, whether it looks wavy to the eye or not.

The blade that Glenn honed for me was exactly what you are describing. The width of the bevel varied from narrow to wide to narrow again along the length of the blade, and only on one side. It was because of the way the blade was ground. Nevertheless, Glen put an edge on that bad boy like you can't believe.

Originally Posted by Bart

AH!
The gender of angels. My favorite discussion...

I do 90% of my bevel correction work on a Coticule:
- because it leaves a bevel with a total absence of deep scratches..

OK, that's what Bart has taught me for today. I have two razors in the honing line up for today that need new bevels. They'll be set with a coticule.

Originally Posted by Quick

Here, try this

As a premier SRP honemeister, master razor restorer, SRP moderator, SRP newbie mentor and all around looked up to guy, you should see it as your OBLIGATION to have and use a full array of stones in every grit.

1) People are going to ask your opinion on what they should buy. You should have experienced them all.
2) People are going to ask your opinion on how their stone compares to some other. You should have experienced them all.
3) It's going to pay off in your business. "If you own any stones or are considering buying some, let me know. I will hone your razor on the same stones so you can see the results you can expect". You should have them all.
4) more?

Now go forth and purchase!

Quick makes a very good argument here, Glen. You *owe* it to us to have every stone!

They are all important IMO. All the bits fit together to make the whole - if any link in the chain is weak, the whole thing is weak.

I think you see people obsessing over the higher grit stones for several reasons. One is the perception that the finishers affect the shaveability of a razor in a more direct way than the bevel-setters or intermediate stones. This is most likely because the finisher edge is the one that touches the face. This is of course true, but the relationship between the shave and the finished edge is a conditional one - given you have correctly established the bevel.

Another reason is that there seems to be a fairly broad range of finishers. Eschers, Shaptons, natural Japanese, coticules, etc. There is a natural tendancy to want to try them out to see which one or ones best suit your face or particular steels/razors. In terms of lower grit stones, there seems to me to be fewer options - synthetics mainly, regardless of brand.

Finally, we have all been responsible for building up a mystique surrounding finishers. Think about how we generally revere the Escher, how we speak in hushed tones about the natural Japanese stones, how we are prepared to pay fairly ridiculous prices (even though you could argue they are market value) for these bits of rock. Bevel setters, on the other hand, are generally thought of as mundane items - how many times have I read the word "workhorse" when describing people's lower grit hones? They are not considered exotic, they are generally fairly cheap in comparison to finishers, they are uniform and bland and grey.

I'm not saying I believe any of this personally, but I feel this is the prevailing atmosphere in which we operate here. I'm guilty of it myself - I paid an inordinate amount of money for my Asagi, posted pictures of it, raved about its performance etc. But what I forgot to mention is that it only works the way it does because my lower grit stones did their job properly in the first place.

Here's how I roughly visualise the relative importance of the honing phases (and therefore, I guess, types of and uses for the various hones):



James.