Thread: Is the Belgium Blue Wetstone ample enough?

I am awaiting the above mentioned to arrive and just wandered if this was enough to hone my straight razor with along with some stropping afterwards?....

You can get a razor to pop hairs with a Belgian blue (according to Beglischer Brocken, I never tried). Lots of members of Nassrasur do so but many use pasted strops before going to plain leather.

sorry to say no.
you need norton 4/8k if you are new to honing

would i paste the canvas side of my strop??..and then proceed to the leather side, or do i need to purchase another strop... thanks in advance !!

If you were to go from a BBW directly to pastes i would recommend using them on a paddle strop. You can even make your own & use balsa. A hanging strop has more flex & with aggressive paste you may find you're rounding the edge slightly. Leave the hanging strop clean for everyday use.
The BBW is not the fastest rock, but you can speed things up by using a slurry & then diluting it gradually.

Short answer: No, cf. What hone(s) do I need? - Straight Razor Place Wiki.

You will also find Belgian Hones - Straight Razor Place Wiki and Category:Honing - Straight Razor Place Wiki useful. There's an article on building your own pasted balsa strop in there, too.

Good luck, and keep us posted on your progress.

Regards
Robin

I must agree with what everyone has said already. I use the BBW in my honing routine, but it is pretty slow and it doesn't give me a shave ready edge alone. I do like to pair it with my coticule, then go to pasted strops or balsa though... then I get a pretty good edge

As Kees pointed out already and I will expound on...

The EU forums have a slightly different way of doing things then SRP does...

They believe, and use quite effectively, the Dovo line and and other pastes using the full spectrum, mostly on hanging leather or loom strops...

SRP is more of a honing forum, we tend to discourage the full use of pastes...


Either way will get you to a shaving edge but they are slightly different, here we basically believe in honing from bevel set to beyond the 10k polishing level using various stones and techniques...

There, they use a bevel setter, and then pastes to create a slightly rounded shaving edge...

Ahhhhh the fun of the chase to a straight edge shave....

after reading some posts of Josh Earl I played a bit with edges from belgian blue. it actually works quite well on some razors, like old sheffields.
i think it's fun to play with once you have some honing experience, but that's about it.
your best option is to just pick one way of doing things that works for fair number of people and stick to it until you get good results.
even better make sure your razor is honed by somebody with plenty of experience and first concentrate on learning to use it. good edge is just the beginning of it, the shaving and stropping skills are no less important.

Yes you can, but be prepared to shave with an edge that's not abundantly keen, although it will shave your beard. A strop loaded with Chromium Oxide is about the cheapest option to get more keenness. (it might not be the very best option, but it works)

BBWs are slow. They need slurry and back-and forth (or otherwise circling) strokes performed with a bit of pressure in order to remove steel at an acceptable rate. Although it won't be practical to restore a beat up edge in need of plenty bevel work, it works fairly well on a razor that dulled from normal use.
Once the razor has nice even bevel sides and shaves arm hair with ease, raise fresh slurry that you keep rather thin. Perform about 100 light laps, using the X-stroke this time. Do not dilute the slurry to plain water. Plain water on a BBW does not work well (at least not on the ones I have tried) It seems to dull rather than sharpen. Just perform a shave test on one cheeck after those 100 laps. Repeat the procedure on thin slurry if you're not completely satisfied. You can keep doing this as long as the edge seems to improve during the test shave.
It is imperative that you strop well before shaving. I recommend 50 on linen and about the same on leather, before the first shave.
Once you hit the sharpness limit off the BBW, you could try to strop 10-20 laps on Chromium Oxide and find out if that brings you further up the keenness ladder. Don't go overboard on the CrO.

Please keep us posted,

Bart.