Thread: How often do you hone?

How often do you hone your razors? Is learning to hone a skill that needs to be learned by every straight razor shaver? Did every shaver learn to hone before safety razors? I'm wondering if sending my razor to be honed once a year or so is acceptable rather than purchasing hones and honing myself.

Learning to hone isn't essential. Once your razor is shave-ready, you could touch it up almost indefinitely with a pasted paddle strop, a bench hone or a finishing hone. If you want to have a large rotation or are interested in learning, then it does take a bit of patience to learn how to get a blade shave-ready. Lynn's DVD is a great shortcut.

At least one senior member here doesn't hone. A pasted paddle or a fine barber hone will keep a razor going for a long time.

honing is not that difficult, its all about technique and practice...master face prep, stroping and the art of shaving...then master honing...divide & conquer...

Originally Posted by mparker762

At least one senior member here doesn't hone. A pasted paddle or a fine barber hone will keep a razor going for a long time.

Hey, I resemble that remark!!

I do occasionally hone my own razors but more often then not send them to someone doing it almost daily. The razors I sell honed are now done by one of our resident experts as well.

A asted paddle will buy you plenty of time but honing is still a skill one should try to master on his own as eventually every razor will still need real honing on a stone. I realize not everyone has the time to devote to learning or our busy lives keep us from doing it often but it's nice to at least know how it's done.

Tony

A razor needs to be honed when it tells you. If you have an average beard type you can expect to get probably between 10-15 shaves between honings. If you use a pasted strop you can probably extend that by a wide margin but eventually you will need to get it honed.

Certainly you can send it out to be honed. In the past all the rich guys did that. However most people learned to hone. Many weren't too good at it and probably suffered with terrible shaves and thats probably one reason why Mr Gillette was able to win them over.

Tony, MP was talking about Josh lol

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

A razor needs to be honed when it tells you. If you have an average beard type you can expect to get probably between 10-15 shaves between honings. If you use a pasted strop you can probably extend that by a wide margin but eventually you will need to get it honed.

I hope I'm not displaying my ignorance too much but when you say 10-15 shaves between honings...am I correct to assume that would be a "touchup" session like the typical 5-6 strokes on a 8k norton or chromium oxide or coticule stone?

You're correct, Steve.

I'm still using a Puma razor daily that I last honed back in April or May of 2006. It's still shaving great and BBS. And no I don't have a light beard.

I know, I know...but the poster asked, so I'm answering...


Scott