Very Humbling Honing Experience: Need Advice
After watching Lynn's video several times and reading all the honing advice on the forum for the past month, I thought I would be ready to successfully hone some razors when my Norton and Coticule arrived. The stones came yesterday and I decided to use the pyramid methods described so often on 4 practice razors that I bough and cleaned up from an antique mall. The razors seemed to be 4/4, 5/8, 6/8, and 6/8 all made in Solington Germany and there did not seem to be any damage to the blades.
After laping the Norton stone using the pencil grid method and rounding the edges I decided to use some of the higher pyramids since all the blades were dull and I heard that Solington steel was fairly hard. I did pyramids of 10-10, 5-5, 3-3, 1-3, and 1-5 on all the razors trying to use light and even pressure the whole way as Lynn described in the video.
After this I took the blades to the coticule for 10 strokes and then stroped up the razors with 25 strokes on the leather. The blades felt sharper but not enough to cut the hair on my arm very well. I was not sure if they were over or under honed. I then went back to the Norton for another lower pyramid of 5-5, 3-3, 1-3, 1-5 then 10 more strokes on the coticule and more stroping. The blades felt fairly sharp but not scary sharp.
This morning I tried shaving with all 4 blades hoping that I would get lucky with at least one. Two blades did not cut the hair, and two cut some hair but not well at all.
I am now very confused as to what to do next. There are so many variables and I am not sure what I am doing wrong. It seems that the only way that I can really learn to hone well would be to sit down one-on-one with an expert for a few hours.