Hi All,

I bought two older ebay straights. One was made in Soligen and says H. Greenberg. The other says Quigley's Best.

I have Japenese stones of 800, 1000, 4000 and 6000 grits. Also got Tony's four sided strop with 3, 1, .5 and .25 and also his hanging strop.

After, must of been 8-10 hours of honing and are re-honing, I got the Soligen one to do a hanging hair test to pass, but the shave was aweful, it would pull hairs when going with the grain.

The Quigley's Best was strange because it would not pass the HHT but would shave OK with the grain but not against.

Soooo, I gave up and went to a old time cutlery store in SF in the North Beach area. The dude that sharpened them was an old timer. I actually like knives too and brought in my favorite Benchmade knife (that was pretty sharp) but wanted to see what super sharp by a pro would be like.

Well, long story short, it cost five bucks a piece for the straights and three for the Benchmade and they came back almost in the same shape but looks bad. I mean it looks like they put it on a machine and theres weird pitting spots almost 3/8s of an inch up from the edge of the blades for the straights and the Benchmade. On top of that on one of the straights, the edge was curled to one side, very visble with light. Course both straights did not pass HHT.

I stropped the two straights, and one thing I noticed is that it sounds much different. I didn't have a chance to do a real shave with it yet, but did a quick lather and tried it on my cheeks (the Soligen one). Felt the same as when I honed it!!

Would you say that these two straights are a hunk of junk or I was fooled into believing that they were competent at what they were doing?

Now, I'm out of 13 bucks and will have to fix those wierd pitting marks on my Benchmade...


Sorry for the long post but all comments would be appreciated.


Have a great day and God bless.


-kelly