Thread: Do I need a specific type of whetstone to hone my razor?

Originally Posted by Marshal

IF your 12K is one of these:



That's a Guangxi/Chinese 12K stone. It usually comes with a rubbing stone made of the same material. The stone is pretty slow, very fine, and very hard, but also most of what you need. There are a few ways to go about honing with just that and maybe a handful of inexpensive rubbing stones to help polish the edge.

Edit - I see that's exactly what you've got. The route I typically use one-stone honing with this fellow is to set the bevel, your sand paper should work for that. Then I'll use a piece of coticule, doesn't have to be big, to make a slurry on top of the stone. I do a few dilutions, until I'm almost on pure water. Then I switch over to the rubbing stone that came with my Guangxi and make a medium slurry with that. I'll dilute that mix until I'm almost honing on pure water, then wash the stone and do a good number of passes on pure water.

I have a similar stone, and there's one more thing you can do with it to go from a good to a super fine edge: you can use the slurry as strop paste. It actually has improved on edges I got from SRD. This only works if you have managed to get a very decent honing done first (which is the part that I find difficult). After I used the slurry from my Chinese stone as paste the razors pop hairs in mid air like crazy.

The items finally arrived
The king stone (ready to hone!) aaaaaaaand dun dun duuuuuuuuuuun...a shave-ready razor!
I decided to take it for a test drive and shave with it.
In order to have a more accurate comparisson, I shaved half my face with my razor and the other half with the razor Peter gave me. There was a difference, oh yes! My razor shaves, but is not quite there yet compared to Peter's razor.

I will post photos as soon as I can.
Thank you Peter, your help is much appreciated!
Time to re-watch those "how to hone" videos!

That's awesome! Good luck with the new hone.

What a difference it is to have a "reference razor"
After using Peter's razor, I picked up my Invicta razor and the stone he gave to me. Did around 30 strokes on the 6K side and other 60 on the 12K, X strokes on the pad strop and what a difference! The razor shaves, and it's quite good at it! My guess is that the bevel and the edge could have been taken to this state even using the 12K stone but I would have probably need a lot more strokes than 60.

I am used to my Merkur HD and Derby blades, they provide the smoothest shave for me... until Peter's razor arrived. Now I have 3 shaving tools that perform awesomely. My only regret is not having a beard that grows fast enough to shave it daily haha.
I will now have a proper rotation with 2 SR and 1 DE

Thank you Peter!
Photos coming soon!

Photos!