Quote Originally Posted by BigMallard View Post
From seeing the videos from Lynn I was doing it wrong.

I took a Norton medium Crystolon stone to the razor first, because it was extremely dull. I then went to a King 800, then a Norton Fine India. With each of the stones I established a burr, then eliminated it with a hard plastic art eraser. I made my way up to a natural hard translucent Arkansas stone. From there I took the razor to a pasted strop. The strop was pasted with White rouge. Afterwards I took the razor to a Belgian Shell strop(used antique acquired from my father in-law). First on the canvas side, then the leather, 40 strokes on each piece. After that I tried all the tests including the thumb nail test and the hair "popping" test.

I used Colgate shaving soap with a dabble of HeadSlick (from HeadBlade), to aid with lubrication. I shaved all of my beard in my first go 'round and it felt great. I will never shave with a "159' bladed razor blade again. I love my Straights.
I don't think that the forming of a burr is wrong per se, so long as you manage to remove it and produce a sharp edge as the end result. Something you obviously did. From a perfectionist standpoint, the forming and subsequent removal of a burr does in fact mean that metal is wasted and the life span of the razor is shortened, but it is up to the owner of the razor to decide whether this is ok.

Lynn is a professional razor honer. It's much more important for him (and other professional honers) to minimize metal waste, as he hones razors for other people.