Thread: Honing & Stropping Experience

I had the pleasure of meeting SRP member boballman (Bob) a couple days ago. He had offered to help me with sharpening a few Ebay razors I had bought. All are carbon steel razors, no stainless.

The reason I am doing this thread is due to a great experience with Bob. He taught me how to hone and strop razors. Like everything, there is more than one way to do things. As a new straight razor shaver I needed one for sure way to sharpen a razor. This is what equipment we used.

Norton 4000/8000 hone
Chinese 12000 hone
Hand American hand hone system with 3 pads, 1. .5 CRO OX 2. .25 diamond 3. leather
Microscope

We honed with the Norton 4000 until water clearly was pushed along entire edge of blade pushing and pulling. If there was a holladay in this water that spot was still dull or no bevel set yet. We made sure that water was pushed the entire length of the blade before going to the Norton 8000 side. We also verified this procedure using a microscope. The water in front of the blade proved what we saw on the microscope. The 6 razors we sharpened had as little as 5 strokes on the 4000 to as many as 50 strokes to get the bevel set.

We then went to the Norton 8000 hone. 25 strokes counting a push and pull as one stroke.

Now the Chinese 12000 hone. Again 25 strokes.

Now we pulled out the Hand American hand hone system.
First we used the .5 CRO OX, 15 strokes
Now we switched the the pad with .25 diamond, 15 strokes.
Now we switched to the leather pad, 25 strokes.

Every razor popped hanging hair. I have shaved with each of these razors and all did well, a couple did better than others. Maybe it was me, I am very new to straight razor shaving. The exact numbers of strokes is not exact but close.

Rick

Rick, thank you for the kind words. It was a pleasure meeting you.

There is some very good info on here. I thank you for the pleasant post! Honing is something I haven't done yet. No stone, and only a week into shaving with a straight. But honestly, it is scary thinking about it since it seems so complicated. This post really helped put an image in my head of how to hone a razor.

Thanks for sharing Rick, it's always great to hear about honing
success and our wonderful straight razor community!

- Scott

Appreciate the comments. I have yet to meet an unfriendly SRP member. Everyone has been helpful and supportive.

Something I didn't mention about Bob Allman, he makes razors. His garage is a shop full of tools. He has also built a number of to-scale 15th century sailing ships that are detailed and flat beautiful. He showed me about 75 razors he built that look as good as any I've seen here on SRP. If you get a chance, go to his profile page and look at his gallery. That is just a few of his razors.

Thanks again for the positive comments.

Originally Posted by boballman

Rick, thank you for the kind words. It was a pleasure meeting you.

Hello Bob, welcome to SRP. Sounds like you could make a great contribution to the forum. Especially the workshop. I hope you stick around.

Originally Posted by sebell

Thanks for sharing Rick, it's always great to hear about honing
success and our wonderful straight razor community!

- Scott

+1, thanks for sharing your experience.

Originally Posted by Raudrive

Something I didn't mention about Bob Allman, he makes razors. His garage is a shop full of tools. He has also built a number of to-scale 15th century sailing ships that are detailed and flat beautiful. He showed me about 75 razors he built that look as good as any I've seen here on SRP. If you get a chance, go to his profile page and look at his gallery. That is just a few of his razors.

Thanks again for the positive comments.

I just checked out the gallery and the razors are wonderful works of art. Thanks !

Originally Posted by Disburden

I just checked out the gallery and the razors are wonderful works of art. Thanks !

Holy cow !! Those are some beautiful razors.