Thread: Hone or strop?

Originally Posted by eddy79

If your have an old barber who knows straights get him to hone it and give you a lesson on stropping. I found a local barber and he has helped with all aspects including honing. Become friends with him and reap the benefits of his experience

you may be able to have the same barber work with you when you begin to hone yourself.

For honing and refreshing I started with a linen and felt strop with chromium oxide paste. It works well for me as a quick refresh between honing. I just bought my first stones a couple weeks ago and I went with the Norton 3 stone set offered by SRP which goes up to 8000. I am considering a 12K stone but haven't taken it to that point yet.

As a newbie I get about 2-3 months out of a sharpening with leather and linen stropping before I start refreshing. I get another month or two after that before I put the blade back on the stone. I am quite sure everyone on here is right as they have said it will vary greatly between individuals

Welcome to SRP Lejob: If you can't find a local mentor use youtube as your tutor. Lots of good videos on how to shave, strop, and hone your S.R. Many S.R. shavers learned by asking questions on the forums and watching youtube videos.

Wow, first of all, nice replies. Lots of very useful information!

To answers some questions: I didn't buy the razors from the fake advice guy. The two blades are both Kropp blades in good condition, needing a small amount of honing (which is kind of weird to say for me because 'honing' is Dutch for honey). They're 6/8 with a hollow grind. Here are some pictures:





I'll bring the stone to my local barber shop and start asking some thing about the process of keeping the blade sharp.

So yeah, bottom line is that I'm going to follow the advice to wait with honing. First I need to fully understand the whole straight shaving itself. Thanks for that you're all awesome!