Thread: Looking for first set of stones

This thread is immensely helpful, thank you gentleman. Aces!

The atoma is 400 as well. The atoma 400 blows the dmt 325 away in cutting speed and the atoma you can get replacement grit which you can't do with any of the others. I brought a 1200 atoma and the replacement 400 grit and put the 400 on the back of the 1200 to make a dual grit stone. I am unsure on the ezelaps weight but the dmt is hard to use without a stone holder as it is so heavy. The atoma is very light and easy to use by hand

10Pups, what do you mean when you say barbers hones can be found all over the place? I have had some difficulty finding one.

Originally Posted by Doxster

While I'm here I'll throw another question out here, do you guys know any European shop that sells DMT 325 or any other good lapping stone?

www.sliqhaq.se sells DMT, Norton and Naniwa

The OP could also do as I did and buy a stone that a one stone hone can be achieved on. Although I didn't have any success for the first few months, after many attempts and reaching out for help I now can successfully hone a razor.. The downside to this method is if you get a dud of a stone you'll be frustrated forever and it's much much harder to learn. You'll also probably acquire more stones in the long run anyways.

For me the problem is honing on synthetic stones I don't know how to!

But they are great places to start and less frustrating. The naniwa 3/8k I've heard is just a stellar stone!

It's really a YMMV thing. If a certain set of stones or single stone "speaks" to you or catches your attention go for it.
Worst case scenario you end up selling it/them and moving on to something else or keeping it and using it for something else.

After a certain amount of time you will become good with your stones whichever kind they may be.

There is a ton of information on different stones here on SRP and its mind boggling how much knowledge our members have in different areas. Lots of guys specialize in a certain stone or set of stones and can be a vault of knowledge.

I'm sure you'll find the right stone for you.

I guess you already have

After alot of back and forth I went with the Naniwa 3k/8k combo stone, an Atoma 400 lapping stone and a stone holder. I received the stones yesterday and had my first go with them today.

So I had my first go with the stones, lapping went well under running water, got them all even.

I started with my 5$ gold dollar straight from Aliexpress, wich I obviously don't care about. That didn't work, that one is in bad need of a bevel setting. Wich is a later project.

I moved on to my PIF'ed Wilbert Cutlery straight, that was honed by someone far more knowledgeable than me. Did 25-30 straight strokes on the 3000 side, and about as many on the 8000 side. My arm became very smooth after the honing, unfortunately I shaved this morning so it will have to wait with the test shave.

Yeah the GD is not the best to start off with being new to honing. I have one because a friend of mine dared me to try one as a challenge. It is one of my favorite shavers but there was a LOT of work I had to do to fix the geometry and design issues that are commonly associated with the GD's. For example, creating even hone wear on both sides of the spine, which ended up being A LOT of spine wear, and to remove the shoulder, so it doesn't hit the stone. I had to do all this before I even dared to touch the edge which would barely cut butter relatively speaking.

Your right, you won't ever really know how well the edge is until you shave. But using a few test can help you to determine if you are getting close. I will see, for the bevel set, how well it cuts my arm hair. It must pop a single selected arm hair with ease though there will be a slight resistance, and this is done without any blade pressure. 95% of the time this is a good bevel set test, but I do have some arm hair that does not sometimes like to be cut no matter how well the bevel is set the other 5%.

Now it's controversial, and I will not argue here on the forum. Bad form and all. But one of my test to tell me if I am close to an edge I like is the HHT. And I recommend using one type of hair from only one person from only one area. With differing hair types, it will make it hard to get conistant CALLIBRATED results. You can find how to use this test not as a parlor trick but as a diagnostic tool in the library. For me the hair has to pop with ease and no forcing it to cut all along the edge. I think on the article mentioned above its a High HHT3 and above. Maybe a HHT4 and above. I can't remember. What I know is that it works FOR ME. again I'm not here to ague if any chooses to. I'm just here to try to help.

When I do the above tests I normally go into my shave shave ready with maybe once in a while a little tweaking here or there. But they work for me. But what helped the most was having someone more experienced physically stand beside me helping me along. And in a short time I was able to get these test calibrated and working for me the way I like and now I am getting consistent honing result mostly every time. Hope this might help in future attempts.

I forgot got to mention that for the bevel set it must pop the arm hair at the base of the hair if not a mm or 2 above all along the edge of the razor for me to tell if I'm ready to examine the edge and move on. The bevel set is KEY for every honing session. Without a good bevel set you are up the creek without a paddle going backwards. And I will say there are MANY aspects to the bevel, too many to mention in just one post, that you will learn that will take you some time learning for you to learn what we mean when we say "the bevel is set".

God Bless,
Neil

Thanks for the info Neil! Very much appreciated!

I am at a loss finding a "honemeister" close to me, traditional shaving is not something common in Sweden. Straight razor shaving even less so, so you can imagine how common it is for people to hone their own razors...

If you know a youtube guru that deserves a subscription (preferably with tutorials etc) I'm all ears :-)

You might want to start here, go the Library/Additional Resources (scroll down to the end)/ Shaving Related Help Files/ scroll down to Honing Related/ Honing Videos.

There are some good videos there, for additional help, search YouTube for Lynn Abrams and GSSixgun. Both have extensive videos posted that cover most any honing situation you will encounter.

For videos I looked up Lynn, Gssixgun, and mainaman. All of these guys are here on SRP. but mainaman's vids I used to help learn my jnats.

But for honemeister help look up Bernard he has a few post in the head shaving forum here on SRP. and unless I am mistaken he is in Norway. Though that is another country over from you he has been here long enough that he might be able to help you in some way or point you to someone he knows. Hope this helps.

Edit: sorry I got his name all wrong. His name is Birnando. His member page is here http://straightrazorpalace.com/members/birnando.html

God Bless,
Neil