Thread: razor honing

Hi
I have been using a straight razor for a few months now, and i am finally starting to get a good shave, without too many cuts. I would like to know where the best place is to send my razors for honing, or how to go about learning to hone my own razors.
cheers
soup

Hi Soup, welcome to SRP.
For learning to hone I direct you to the honing forum and our Wiki. There is a ton of information here for beginning honers.
If you want to send your razor to one of us, the most convenient thing to do is state where you live. For example if you live in the US, it would be a bit silly to mail your razor to e.g. me (Belgium) when there are many US based honemeisters who can also do that for you.

I encourage you to take the step to learn to hone your own razors.
It is a fun thing to do (imo) and once you get the hang of it, you never need to send out your razors again.
The best thing would be to buy a relatively cheap razor (like a wapienica or an arrow razor) and leanr your honing on that.
Learning to hone takes some time, and this way you have a good razor to shave with and to compare with.

Have fun.

Originally Posted by soupdragon

Hi
I have been using a straight razor for a few months now, and i am finally starting to get a good shave, without too many cuts. I would like to know where the best place is to send my razors for honing, or how to go about learning to hone my own razors.
cheers
soup

The easiest way to learn to hone is to find someone in your area that can give you lessons or go to one of the get togethers that's doing a group demonstration.

It's possible to learn by just jumping in and doing it but that can be very frustrating if you don't have a natural talent for it. If you go that route I'd suggest reading everything you can on the subject and watching the great videos that are on the internet...and if things don't work out send your "best effort" to one of the honemeisters on this forum for an evaluation and they can probably tell you what you're doing wrong.

I went the self taught route and over the years went from mediocre to OK to pretty good and then one day got the opportunity to have someone observe my technique and by implementing a couple of his suggestions I improved my consistency.

Honing is a lot like golf or tennis in that it really helps if you start with the proper technique...and that for some it takes a lot (years in my case ) of practice before becoming proficient.