Quote Originally Posted by Scipio View Post
To be honest, touching up is the best way to learn honing IMO. Remember that touching up and honing are really two completely different things. All you are doing is polishing an already sharp edge. You could buy a barber hone for under 50 dollars and use 4-6 strokes which I doubt you'd go wrong. Or a Naniwa 12K and do 10-20 strokes, if you want to purchase from SRD.
+1. Just keep it super light and you'll do fine.

You might find a barber hone in the classifieds... A Nani 12K would also work for touch ups, and I know SRP sells those.

As for judging when to do a touch up - it's pretty obvious you're in need of one now, but usually I judge the shave-readiness of a razor with a WTG stroke on my sideburn. I can tell by the resistance if I need to hone or not. It removes all of the other variables and let's me judge just the edge itself.