Thread: Northern England - couple of questions

Wondered if I could seek some advice on a couple of points.

1st, I appear to have a nick in the blade of my SR. It's so tiny I can't even get it to appear on a photograph, & I've tried with a decent camera & my mobile. It's probably about 1cm from the toe, & you can't even see it unless you really look. You can just feel it if you run the blade along your thumbnail. Sizewise, it's a fraction of a millimetre (like a pin head) in both depth & width, just that little bit where the edge of the blade shines when it catches the light. Even stropping seems to have reduced the amount it catches on my thumbnail, but it doesn't get rid of it. I've shaved once a couple of days ago when I first noticed it, & I can't say it caused me any problems, it just bothers me as I'm new to this & the razor is only about a month old. I have no idea how it happened or how long it's been there. Should I be getting it honed straight away, or do you think I'm okay to leave it until it needs honing?


which leads me to my 2nd question, does anybody know anywhere in the North of England (I'm in Castleford, West Yorkshire) that does honing? I can't for love nor money seem to find anywhere, & all of my local barbers look at me like I'm a dingbat, some of them are even confused by the word "honing". It doesn't helping walking into a barbers when I'm a member of the folicly challenged club either. I did check the SRP classified sections but didn't see anything in the UK. Please correct me & direct me if I'm wrong.

Failing that, I would consider honing it myself with something gentle, but the Naniwa stones are too expensive for me (okay to expensive to explain the cost to the wife), & so are the Norton's, not that I can find anywhere to purchase the Norton's in the UK.

Would the 12K Chinese Waterstone at the bottom of the

Razor Hones

be a suitable starting hone just for touching up the edge, or are there any of the others that you would recommend from here, or would you just say leave it well alone for now?

Thank you in advance for any help.