Thread: Newbie Tip: Norton lapping/honing/glazing

Not sure if this makes any sense. If it does, it might help some of the other newbies.


Here's some background in the form of a short novel -- read it if you're bored:

I started using straights in the Fall, and of course spent countless hours researching and eventually trying my hand at honing a brand new razor. I eventually got the razor very sharp, but not sharp enough for anything less than a painful, grabby shave.

Then I joined this forum. I read that sometimes hones need to be lapped straight out of the box. After checking on a glass table, my 4K/8K Norton didn't appear flat at all, and the edges weren't beveled, so I proceeded to lap with 800-grit wetsandpaper. Within 10 minutes, I passed the HHT for the first time. Awesome!!!

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That worked for a while, and I picked up a few restored razors from Billy's Blades in the meantime. They gave a super shave, but eventually dulled, and I went back to some light honing and trying to improve my lousy x-pattern technique. I bought the Radioshack microscope and a #12000 Kitayama. I couldn't get ANY of the razors sharp worth a damn, and eventually realized that the hone wasn't quite flat.

Lapped again with 800 grit. Tried honing again, but this time, it didn't help -- bevel looked ok in the microscope, but felt dull and gave painful shaves. I went back to using the DE safety razor for several months, but occasionally tried lapping/honing with no real progress. I might as well have been honing on a wooden 2x4". Frustration sets in.

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Back to the forums for research, I stumbled across some old posts warning about 'glazing' the hones. Wow. Makes perfect sense. My Norton was flat and smooth, as I thought it was supposed to be. But I knew something was wrong when I could seemingly do 50 laps on the 4K without any noticeable change. No metal was coming off onto the hone.

This time, I lapped with 220 grit on the 4K side, and 320 grit on the 8K side. The hone's texture was restored, and after about half of the infamous 'Norton pyramid' (plus stropping), I just finished a very comfortable shave. Not quite perfect yet, but I'm closer than ever before.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't glaze your hones. As I understand it, the Norton lapping stone is supposedly around 200 grit, so don't be afraid to use some lower-grit sandpaper for lapping.

Perhaps I didn't do a good enough job of keeping the waterstone clean with the 800-grit sandpaper, or perhaps 800-grit was too high to be using in the first place? (Some members prefer even higher grits for lapping.) Nevertheless, I think I'll be sticking with lower-grit paper from now on.

Any thoughts or corrections welcome...