Thread: noob, Honing

Very good points have been brought up..I'm a knife guy too. I use different hones for my knives, I use a lot of Arkansas stones with Oil. I have taken some knives to my Naniwas, and found out you can cut right into them, very easily. Coticules work pretty well for knives, as does the BBW (Belgian Blue Whetstone)

I'd get a set of Nortons, at least the 4/8k, or the 220/1k 4/8k and flattening stone. You can usually pick them up for 130.00 Add a Chinese 12k and your good to go.
Keep the spyderco system for your knives, I too think it's kind of narrow, and if your have limited experience honing razors, You could wind up with an uneven bevel.

It's always a good idea to send out one razor to get professionally honed, so you have a bench mark.

Many razors can be used right out of the box as mentioned...Filarmonica comes to mind. The NOS one's were actually shave ready out of the box, which is rare.. You also have to consider the person using it, What's their skill level. For intance, I can shave with a dull razor, it's not a great experience, but I can do it.

I'm a knife sharpener as well, and the first time I tried to hone my razor I ended up with the frowning blade. It's a thread in beginners that might have some good tips they helped me a lot. Biggest difference is how stupidly even your application of pressure has to be or it won't hone straight. Also, if you get waterstones and use them for both knives and razors be sure to flatten really well the knives seem to leave little scratches in the finer hones.