Thread: Sharp blade?

Maybe "Knife" needs to understand that knife edges and open razor edges are two different animals. Knives that are sharpened on high grits aren't anywhere close to the level of smoothness that open razors are brought to, just to shave comfortably, smoothly, closely, and safely. Maybe these days with the higher grade steels and the popularity of more expensive steels in knives (i.e. japanese blades) for finer cutting work (think sushi) blends the two but if you're equating honing rods (especially those repulsive grooved steel rods) that's just re-aligning the blade's edge and causing micro-serrations, definitely NOT the equivalent to what people are doing when they strop the blades they cut their facial hairs off with.

Theoretically, you can shave off a hone, but it requires a light touch and you have to have that touch. You're circumventing the stropping, depending on the last stroke or two to substitute the realignment of all the microscopic teeth of the finest of the fine. This is for advanced users, IMO. Or a beginner with prior experience of some sort with an innate talent for delicate touch.

As for using a barber's hone, or any hone, before every shave... sounds like a waste of steel. If someone doesn't have the touch for stropping chances are they don't have the touch for honing. As for honing a tiny bit here and there... I'd say to adequately develop the touch and feel for it it would be best to undertake this skill for longer periods of time, not shorter. I feel I don't regain my touch until after several minutes of honing.

I use my finisher, an estimated 12,000 grit ceramic hone, to refresh my edges. Significantly higher grit hone than the barber's hones. It only takes 30 seconds. Washing off the mineral oil coating on the edge, bringing the hone out, applying the water and all the fiddling about bringing those two pieces of equipment out, the drying and re-application of protective oil to the refinished/refreshed edge takes significantly more time than the actual act of refreshing it! After all the drama of honing an edge from chipped and butter knife dull to a smooth shaving edge.. refreshing the edge is a major anticlimax and is disappointingly uneventful! I'm like: "What... that's it?"

After honing from scratch and shaving with several razors past acceptable shaving, then refreshing, I finally undertook the task of refreshing an edge and then shaving directly off the finisher hone. It was a successful, smooth shave without excess irritation that day or follicle bumps the following two days (my diagnostic period), which is pseudo folliculitis barbae. This was after many months of shaving almost exclusively with an open razor.

Do what you will, Knife. But without wrapping your head around what stropping is, what it does, and it's importance integrating it into your open razor routine you're just putting off an important aspect of maintaining a shaving edge. You can, conceivably, just constantly refresh off a hone and shave with that alone. It's wasteful and unnecessary of the steel. If it's time constraints then perhaps shaving with an open/straight razor isn't appropriate for you at this time. But it's an interesting idea. Conceivably.

You can do to your razor what you want to, it's your razor and your face. But my impression from what I've learned and experienced of this traditional wet shaving method and system is that Stropping is King, as far as maintaining an edge and finishing it off the hones. If you avoid that you're just another poser & a p---y. My impression and experience is that learning to hone and developing the fine touch required, especially for the last part of the final polishing stage to achieve that safely shaving edge, is something developed with longer honing periods, not the shortest of the sessions. Refreshing edges is the least favorable condition to learn how to maintain the keeness required of a shaver. Get yourself a "trash" blade and use that for 5-10 solid minutes (real minutes) to develop the feel, it's subtle but it will make all the difference, before you take that shaving blade to the hone. Be sure to clean off the swarf before you put the shaving blade to the hone, too.

Shaving multiple times without stropping simply deflects the edge even more, opening the way for more impactions. The importance of stropping isn't just for the smoothness of the shave immediately after, it helps reduce the warping of the delicate edge and impactions that result from consecutive shaving. Stropping reduces wear and tear of the shaving edge. Stropping and honing are complementary to each other, not even considering abrasive pasted strops. Some stropping is also very effective as a way to thoroughly dry the edge for safe storage after shaving. Similar to stropping motions of the edge on a towel or your shirt. The surface of the strop is more solid than fabric, hence superior for wiping off any last trace of moisture.

The longer the time between refreshing the edge on a hone, the lower the grit may be necessary to return the edge to its former level of integrity. This may be something as miniscule as 5-10 laps (delicate) on the next to highest grit, then 5-10 laps (delicately!) on the finisher. Not much drama, not much effort. But, oh.... the subtlety! This personifies the gentle-manly aspect of our gentlemanly pursuit of traditional wet-shaving.

AxelH, I wish I could give you multiple thanks that was a great post. Thank you.

Now just so you know I'm not trying to get away from stropping if its integral I'm definitely into doing it. In fact I’ve been told on this post about how the honing process roughens the edge and the strop smoothes it, so I’ll be definitely doing that. My main question in this post has to do with efficiency. I want to have the best shave experience, as much as possible, with the littlest of effort. If you follow along with this tread you’ll see where I made my assumption and where I was corrected on those assumption, which is why I’m here to learn. Right now I’m convinced about stropping before each shave. The honing is where I want to make it more efficient. If honing every three months is better then that’s what I’ll do, but I want to know why. See if it take three months before you hone, to me it means that in those three months, the edge is getting more and more dull till the point where you just have to hone it. Where I figure you can just sharpen it a little (followed by the requisite strop) each day and you never have to go through the long honing process, with a perfect razor each time to boot. Again if this is a bad way of going about it, I won’t doing, but tell me why.

Can someone give me a sense of what is going on, on a microscopic level when honing. Am I right in my previous posts about a lower grit stone (coarser) will grind down faster (take bigger sized metal off) and a higher grit stone (finer) will grind down slower (take smaller sized metal off)?

I did a little research on barber hones and found myself on a page that talked about natural and synthetic stones. Supposedly the synthetic stones is a faster grinding stone, so I’m thinking a barbers hone is a synthetic stone. Now I think a synthetic stone is a faster grinding stone because it was binded better than mother nature did. So again I’m theorizing here, maybe as the razor is passed along the natural hone, the blade is sharpening the stone. Meaning I think as the blade passes over the natural stone and takes away to a lesser extent, some grit as the stone is taking away some metal. The synthetic has less of its grit taken off, so more to grind?

What is the difference between 4K and 8K, is it the particle density, size, angularity………

Knife,

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but I think we've taken this as far as it can go in this thread. This web forum has hundreds, if not thousands, of posts that discuss everything you want to know or have questions about in detail. Look around the forum, read up, and then you'll probably feel more comfortable making some decisions. Seriously, the people here are fanatics about this stuff! I'm sure somewhere around here all your questions have been answered, or at least openly pondered.

Not trying to shut you up, just trying to point you in a better direction to have all your questions answered. At the very least you'll get a LOT of opinions Good luck!

Hi Knife,

Yes, barber's hones are almost all synthetic. The thing that makes them "barber's hones" is mostly size, that they can fit in a shirt pocket. When the barber feels the razor start to pull a little, he can take out the stone, do 5 or 6 laps on it, and get back to shaving his customer. He makes money by shaving, not by honing, so the hones were designed to be very fast cutters.

You're correct that the razor affects the hone, but not by sharpening it. Whether the hone is natural or man-made, the same thing happens at the microscopic level: the exposed crystals are dulled as they cut tiny shreds of metal away from the passing blade. One way to design a faster hone is actually make the binder softer, so that the sharpening crystals are released sooner, before they have dulled as much. You can also, if it's in your power, choose harder material for the crystals.

You're also correct about what a coarser hone does vs. what a finer hone does. It carves away larger pieces of metal. Next time you're at a place that rents tools, see if they rent floor sanders, then look at the sandpapers you can get. You can start with 20-grit paper, which is like earring jewels glued to paper. I've used that stuff, and it doesn't make sawdust so much as it makes shreds of lumber.

Out in natural deposits there are probably stones filled with the world's greatest abrasive particles, but they're useless for honing because the binder is either so hard that the dulled particles can never erode away to reveal fresh ones, or the binder is so weak that a blade knocks the particles out of the way before they have a chance to cut it.

I just got a new synthetic hone yesterday, a Naniwa 12,000 grit. It cuts metal very fast, by releasing worn grit very easily. So the stone wears relatively quickly. It will probably last my lifetime, just the same.

Barber's hones are typically much harder than my new Naniwa. They cut metal very fast by having a higher density of grit particles, which the binder gives up only slowly.

The main difference between a 4k and an 8k is particle size, at least within the same brand of hones. If you mix hone brands you may also have different particle shapes, which is how I'm translating your word "angularity."

I think the neatest honing particle out there is in the Belgian natural hones, the coticules. Those particles are called spessartine garnets; they are crystals that are shaped like little soccer balls, except that the patches that make up the soccer ball shape are flat crystal planes. Where 3 or more flat planes meet you get a cutting point. Because that cutting point is basically a sharp spot poking out from a sphere, it can only make a very shallow cut into a piece of passing metal. This is different from, say, a quartz crystal, which can be needle shaped and therefore cut a relatively deep groove into the passing metal. The shallow cuts from coticule honing make for very gentle shaving edges.

AxelH's description of what happens during stropping is the best I've read. I like its emphasis on damage repair. A human hair is as hard as a piece of copper wire of the same diameter, so yes, there will be some damage done each time you shave. Your thought of honing away that damage each time is sound, but I agree with Axel that it's a waste of steel. The strop will keep you going for at least a full week of shaving with a single razor before you actually need to hone again. Most of us strop after a shave, as part of putting away the razor. I do 20 laps, to make sure there's no residual soap or water to sit on the sharp edge and cause corrosion. Then, when it's time to shave again, 20 laps on the linen side and 80 on the leather to correct all the last shave's little bits of damage and remove the submicroscopic layer of inevitable corrosion.

Good questions by you.

Originally Posted by roughkype

I think the neatest honing particle out there is in the Belgian natural hones, the coticules. Those particles are called spessartine garnets; they are crystals that are shaped like little soccer balls, except that the patches that make up the soccer ball shape are flat crystal planes. Where 3 or more flat planes meet you get a cutting point. Because that cutting point is basically a sharp spot poking out from a sphere, it can only make a very shallow cut into a piece of passing metal. This is different from, say, a quartz crystal, which can be needle shaped and therefore cut a relatively deep groove into the passing metal. The shallow cuts from coticule honing make for very gentle shaving edges.

AxelH's description of what happens during stropping is the best I've read. I like its emphasis on damage repair. A human hair is as hard as a piece of copper wire of the same diameter, so yes, there will be some damage done each time you shave. Your thought of honing away that damage each time is sound, but I agree with Axel that it's a waste of steel. The strop will keep you going for at least a full week of shaving with a single razor before you actually need to hone again. Most of us strop after a shave, as part of putting away the razor. I do 20 laps, to make sure there's no residual soap or water to sit on the sharp edge and cause corrosion. Then, when it's time to shave again, 20 laps on the linen side and 80 on the leather to correct all the last shave's little bits of damage and remove the submicroscopic layer of inevitable corrosion.

Good questions by you.

Thanks, and I am appreciative of your post, too. Are those kind of like bucky balls (Buckminster Fuller)? I've been lent a pretty smooth feeling coticule by a local mentor and have yet to make much use of it but it sure is interesting.

Fullerene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm also intrigued with the prospect of refreshing an edge on a stone that doesn't look like the man-made synthetic waterstones I'm acquainted with. It looks like a natural and the edges are chamfed very well. If it's a "slow" cutter maybe it won't take an entire 30 seconds to refresh it.. instead I'll be allowed by the Great Razor Gods a full 2 minutes of honing servitude to reconnect with the edge and discover if the edge develops a smoother character than the sapphires I've been living off of. I'll have to sacrifice those precious 90 seconds on some other daily chore...

Knife should check out this thread, it's still active, too:

http://straightrazorpalace.com/advan...sses-pics.html

The spessartine garnets are like Buckyballs, but with far fewer faces. Here's Wikipedia's article on them, with a good typical picture. Less spherical than Buckyballs but way more than, say, quartz.

I've got 4 coticules now (one vintage rectangle and 3 bouts) and each is its own critter. Only the vintage one is a proven good finisher so far. I'd suggest going to your borrowed one after you've got a good polish from your 12k, and use it first without a slurry (but maybe raise a very little slurry and rinse it off, to make sure you've got fresh crystals at the surface). A good magnifier will give you some idea of whether you're getting a finer finish or not. Or comparative shaves, of course. Enjoy the experiments.

(edit) I hadn't seen that set of honing photos before; that is a great series. Thanks for including the link. So THAT'S why we're supposed to keep a light hand at the hone.

Yeah, haven't seen your response till now.

Last night I used the 1 + inch wide little coticule with slurries from the Norton prep stone, a tidbit of a barber's hone and it's own slurry. I have a little extra-fine 6"x2" DMT diamond tablet of honing (-1 by D&D standards, only good for cutlery and the lapping/slurry development). It was interesting. I've got a Radioshack 60x-100x microscope (I've long since gotten used to the reversal of direction and image and can use the non-dominant eye for viewing when watching/inspecting the side of the blade I had until that endeavor not regularly viewed).

The blade I was working on is a problem blade. I can see the grind is imbalanced, though I don't know what to think of the spine (I think it's alright, maybe the taped spine brings an undesired uniformity to the resultant edge?). Sad it's a beautifully tarnished 'lil Boker with a beautiful tree engraving on it's hollowed face.

The norton prep stone provides a good straight line to the edge and establishes a new bevel well. The barber's slurry is finer, but I don't think I'd shave off of it. The coticules own slurry is better than that, I think. I didn't really bear down on the correct angle from the 'scope to get the full reflectivity off the slurry finishes. I used this longer, I think it's a natural stone, very hard. It produced a very mirror-like finish and I could see all the deeper scratch patterns clearly from one or more of the earlier grits. Very exciting, though I didn't form a good shaving edge (arm hair dry shave test).