Originally Posted by
Birnando
Here is how I see it:
Whenever you lead a razor down a hone, you are basically using about a quarter or at most a third of the stones width.
The part near the tang is where the action is at.
What that means is that while the entire blade lies on the full-width hone, the pressure will be the highest at the edge where the tang is.
Given the above, one would think a more narrow hone would be able to do the very same thing.
And you would be right.
The thing is, balancing the razor and working parts of the bevel at a time takes a wee bit of practice to learn.
All seasoned honers uses their skills of balancing the blades to their benefit, and would have little to none trouble using a hone like the one Larry is selling.
(although most would not want to)
Just as addressing issues at the tip of a blade would be well within reach with a slight adjustment of lift of the scale side of a razor on a wide hone.
But the ability to do so has taken many of us quite some time to learn.
Therefore, recommending that stone to a new honer is down right wrong in my opinion.
The lack of stability, regardless of what part of the edge is worked, might result in less than stellar results more often than not, so we tend to not recommend that approach.
IMHO that is