Thread: Honing with a Minnesota new guy.....

This evening I met another Minnesota new guy, Brent ( Igotoofar). He came over and brought his new Norton hones ,strop and 3 razors. He said that he wanted to learn to hone so thats what we did.



He had been shaving with 2 of the razors, a Dovo that he bought 20 years ago, and a very nice Bowdins Wedge. The 3rd razor he had just found at an antique store That had a bit of rusting on it. A German hollow ground 9/16, Lakeside Cutlery. I decided to run him thru a full honing cycle so we started with the antique store find. First I took it to the buffer and removed the surface rust & such. Then it looked decent.
I demonstrated on the Chosera 1K and then gave the razor to him. I was very surprised to see just how fast he picked this up. He has a natural slow honing stroke. This was a nice razor to hone. The blade width/spine thickness ratio was less than 4 so the width of the bevel was nice & small.
I lapped his Norton 4/8 combo so after he had gotten the bevel established on the 1K hone he started on the 4K and then to the 8k. To finish I had him use a thuringen.
He did a very good job and was very pleased with the end result.


After that I had him take his Dovo & Bowdins Wedge to the hones to touch up his edges. They were a bit dull. I had hm start by using an Apart barber hone until the edge had a noticeable change and then I moved him to the Thuringen for 50 laps.


He was very pleased with the end result.
From there we went on to strops & stropping. I think he will be getting a horsehide strop real soon!
Brent is a natural at honing. He has picked up the honing stroke and basic honing ideas
very quickly. He said he will come back in a month and we will try out some other hones & stuff.

What I want is a ride in his parachute plane & gyro-copter!

Had a great time, learned a lot from Randy. It was worth the 2+ hour drive in the Blizzard conditions!!!

I now find myself in the positon of realizing there are more things I need to aquire. (ok, I knew that was going to be the case :-) )

I will definitly be going back, there is much knowlege I need to suck out of Randys Head.

Brent Bruns

He taught me as well, you can't get a better honing lesson. I would have been there as well if it wasn't for the conditions

Originally Posted by IGoTooFar

Had a great time, learned a lot from Randy. It was worth the 2+ hour drive in the Blizzard conditions!!!

I now find myself in the positon of realizing there are more things I need to aquire. (ok, I knew that was going to be the case :-) )

I will definitly be going back, there is much knowlege I need to suck out of Randys Head.

Brent Bruns

He was, and is, my mentor! I am still learning!
~Richard