Thread: Info wanted for old barber hone and natural stone

OK, good!

I was in Vancouver about a year and a half ago for a conference and it was a very nice city. I arranged a mini-meetup for while I was there so I know that there are other straight users in your area. If you do an advanced search in the member list you will be able to find the members in your area who have listed their locations. You might want to contact Cobre and see if he would be willing to meet with you. I guarantee that one on one time in person definitely will speed up your learning process.

djamm
I think it is pretty difficult to determine sharp when you are beginning this endeavour. Here are couple scenarios:
You get your first 'shave ready' razor. You are instructed to shave with it (not strop it). You shave with it and because there are about 23 other variables besides the sharpness of the blade, you feel like the blade is not truly shave ready.
You then strop the blade which you do not think is sharp enough, and it becomes immediately less sharp due to less than optimum results from the steepest of all learning curves, stropping.

I also have a barber hone, a nice one. With mine, honing on it is like honing on glass, zero to no feedback. Plus, I think it takes more skill out of the gate to use a palm held hone.
You might look into a well known and fairly inexpensive finisher like a 10K Naniwa Superstone.
I agree with what has been said above, finding someone to demonstrate honing would be the shortest route to caring for your razor. Until then, you have SRP. I would add that a loupe can also be a valued friend.

Originally Posted by Utopian

OK, in that case some issues come up. A barber hone is best used to maintain a previously sharpened razor. Now, that is not the way that I did it but I was monitoring my progress with a microscope to help me figure out what I was doing. A jeweler's loupe is a cheap alternative. Regardless, it really would be helpful if you started out with a properly honed razor in order to learn how to shave. That's because it's harder to learn how to hone and shave as you have no proper means to assess both ends of the process. It would be like learning how to drive a manual transmission car while learning how to replace the clutch in that car.

This is how I started out almost 7 years ago and I do not recommend it. I managed to become a pretty decent honer, but not having a decent gauge at the beginning sets you back a lot.