Honing advice for new SR shavers...

DON'T!

I have had the experience now of shaving with 6 different SRs over the last year+. All were honed by folks that many consider experts here. My first 4 were honed by Lynn, one more than once since it was from SRD and suffered through my first months of stropping and shaving badly. Others were honed by Sharptonn and gssixgun.

I can tell my fellow newbies with certainty that they do a better job than you will do, AND that some of Lynn's early honings were wasted on me, because my stropping, lathering and shaving techniques were still developing, so i didn't get the most out of them. However, with my more recent shaves (last few months) all has fallen into place, most of the time, and with my most recent fresh professionally honed razors and the two from Lynn that I hadn't managed to muck up, I can really tell the difference. I can feel and experience a great edge when it's used on my face, and see the differences through a loupe. Thank you to those 3 great guys and all the others that I haven't used yet.

So my advice to fellow newbies is, "Don't rush out and buy a full set of hones and start fooling with professional edges." Give yourself some time to learn the other elements of SR shaving, and take advantage of the services of real professionals and fellow members who are artisan level at their craft.

Sorry for the soapbox! I'll be quiet now, maybe.
:soapbox:

Sounds like a plan for me as a newb with possibly on one exception to that. We all gotta start somewhere if we ever want to learn how to hone our own, right? So my intent would be on getting a good one for use that I send out to be professionally honed as needed. And concurrently buy a $10 or less piece of junk to practice honing on. Well that is when the time comes, once I upgrade from my current Shavette to begin with. :) I'm interested on your thoughts on that idea?

Definitely practice honing with a cheap razor. You can get some beat up stuff off of ebay really cheap.
I usually recommend people to start with a kitchen knife to the learn the sound and feel of a blade on the hones, after they master that, then move on to whatever they want to hone.

Any razor you want to use to practice with should be sound and free of geometry problems. Learning to hone is tough enough without having to try to learn hone gymnastics right out of the gate. Start with something solid and relatively inexpensive. There were so many no name or unknown brand razors made that are of great quality that can be had for 30 to 50 dollars, I think they are the way to begin.

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Originally Posted by RazorCut

Sounds like a plan for me as a newb with possibly on one exception to that. We all gotta start somewhere if we ever want to learn how to hone our own, right? So my intent would be on getting a good one for use that I send out to be professionally honed as needed. And concurrently buy a $10 or less piece of junk to practice honing on. Well that is when the time comes, once I upgrade from my current Shavette to begin with. :) I'm interested on your thoughts on that idea?

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Sometimes that piece if "junk" can be a really nice shaver. Be choosy when picking your practice razors.

i've been saving up plenty of antique store finds that i purchased for $20 or less for the purpose of honing practice. just make sure there is no rust on the edge and the spine is not warn and you should be fine. don't make it any harder to learn than it already is.

The learning process that I recommend, learn to: 1. Shave, 2. Touch up, 3. Hone. The process really goes quicker if you find someone to show you the ropes along each step. Bevel setting is the toughest of all to master, use tape on the spine.