Attaining consistency?

I don't claim to be a honemiester and mostly hone for myself. The few I've honed for others were not done for money. That said I don't know that all honemiesters don't have their hits and misses with various blades. I usually have good luck with full hollows and trouble with wedges.

I have more consistency than I used to because I have been using a consistent method (pyramid) with the same stones. I have many hones and used to vary the method and what I used a lot and got to know many of them a little but none of them well.

When I bought the Naniwa Superstones I disciplined myself to stick with them and i have begun to really know them. Not a bad thing because i really like them. I may deviate once I get beyond the pyramid and into the finishing but I get my razors sharp with the same set using the same method... at least for the time being.

Some of them take 45 minutes and others more than one session and maybe hours. I don't keep track. That is why I've often said that if guys who hone for $20.00 a razor charged by the hour it would be a hell of a price tag on some of them. Maybe I am wrong and some or all of the honemiesters knock them all out in short order. I will keep at it and maybe I'll get there someday.

For now I have only recently changed from honing everything with taped spines to honing without it. This means I have one heck of a lot of razors to practice on all over again. Like Sham said .... patience. :) It can get frustrating sometimes and then I put the razor down and go do something else. Like the old saying about focus on the journey, not the destination.

Most professional baseball pitchers are pretty outstanding performers and on day one with the same ball, same park, same weather they can pitch a no hitter and the next day get sacked in the second inning. Go figure. No different with honing. Given you and the same stone and the same blade and the same table and chair you can have different results on different days. Maybe a little more focus, or a thousand and one other factors that can effect you. The more you do this thing the better you become and different hardware items affect you less and less but you the human factor can vary the most. Just my 2 cents.

Keep at it. I have honed for others and i can say every razor is tough. I will never be honemeister. i just try to make shaving razors, not odd shaped scalpels to cut people with. Its tough and like has been said above, it takes experience and patience. Some day I will get there, but I have a few years to go.
Good Luck
Trey

Thanks for the encouragement. If I didn't spend so much time practicing this, it wouldn't bother me so much when I hit a wall. The lead factor in causing me to switch from vintage DEs to straights way back was the possibility of honing my own "custom" shaving edges myself. So it matters to me.

Rather than keep banging into that wall, I opted to swallow hard and just do a do-over. If the complete do-over didn't work, then maybe I've really gone off the rails somewhere, and would send it out for a re-hone.

Last night I took it all the way down to DMT 1200, then BBW with slurry, then my "soft" coticule, then my new "hard" coticule, finishing with a Nakayama Asagi and a good stropping. Back when I bought it, I never actually took it all the way back down to 1200 grit. I just "refined" it starting with a coticule and light slurry, as I felt it was pretty close.

Just 90 minutes later, with only a bit less razor for the honing, I'm back in business. The Le Grelot 1/4 grind is as good as it ever got, readily popping hair again. Maybe I went off track somewhere in over-honing, then made it worse by insisting on staying at the upper grits to remove the chip. With so many strokes, maybe I rounded the bevel. I'm inclined now to still send it off to a honemeister to evaluate and honestly critique, just to make sure the new bevel and progression are sound and that I'm not going to repeating my mistakes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FatboySlim

Thanks for the encouragement. If I didn't spend so much time practicing this, it wouldn't bother me so much when I hit a wall. The lead factor in causing me to switch from vintage DEs to straights way back was the possibility of honing my own "custom" shaving edges myself. So it matters to me.

Rather than keep banging into that wall, I opted to swallow hard and just do a do-over. If the complete do-over didn't work, then maybe I've really gone off the rails somewhere, and would send it out for a re-hone.

Last night I took it all the way down to DMT 1200, then BBW with slurry, then my "soft" coticule, then my new "hard" coticule, finishing with a Nakayama Asagi and a good stropping. Back when I bought it, I never actually took it all the way back down to 1200 grit. I just "refined" it starting with a coticule and light slurry, as I felt it was pretty close.

Just 90 minutes later, with only a bit less razor for the honing, I'm back in business. The Le Grelot 1/4 grind is as good as it ever got, readily popping hair again. Maybe I went off track somewhere in over-honing, then made it worse by insisting on staying at the upper grits to remove the chip. With so many strokes, maybe I rounded the bevel. I'm inclined now to still send it off to a honemeister to evaluate and honestly critique, just to make sure the new bevel and progression are sound and that I'm not going to repeating my mistakes.

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Good deal man, working like a dog on the lower grits will ALWAYS pay off. Even if you go to the next grit-level and "find" some ugly spots that weren't apparent at 1200 (seems to happen to me often on a full restore)... drop back down and do it over.

Low grit honing is king, the rest is just...well, finishing.