Thread: How can you tell if you are over honing?

School me on steel hardness. I have 7 straights, all older ones. Most are Wade & Butcher, sword and crown, keystone, and double duck. Are these considered soft or hard steel?

Originally Posted by kimo

I use a Norton 4000/8000. I followed Lynn's recommendation of using the circle method on the 4, then the X. I then went to the 8K side and did about 20 X's. It cut the hair on my arm OK.

Then did 6 X's on a flat pasted (diamond .25) leather block. followed by 15 passes on the linen with 30 passes on the strop.

Shave was harsh and pulled. Did I over hone or was it caused by the diamond paste?

If I go back to hone again, am I in danger of a wire edge?

Granted, some of the answers here are funny...

I do have a very hard stone that is supposed to be 12K or above... If I use it after the 8K should I skip any touching of the diamond pad?

Anything fresh off the hone I give it 50+ laps on rough leather and then 100+ on smooth. Will do this 2 or more times if edge seems harsh. Try without the diamond paste or the 12k, they may be the problem.

Unless you 12k is a 12k synthetic, leave it out of the mix. It is probably not 12k if it’s an Ebay stone, more like 6K and will just screw up your progression.

Same with the Diamond, it is notorious for a harsh edge.

Look at the edge, make sure you have honed all the way to the edge and have a fully set bevel, probably not because you have done too few laps and you never move up until you are absolutely sure the bevel is completely set…

No, none of those razors are especially hard.

Originally Posted by alx

That is very funny.

Over-honing is the opposite of under-honing which is not honed-enough. So in practice a under-honed blade will not cut hairs while an over-honed blade would cut them very easily and the honed-enough blade would shave OK.

For me a over-honed edge is fragile and might give a half a shave and then fail. A honed-enough edge would provide a good-enough shave over and over again while a under-honed edge will not work at all. The difference between a under-honed edge and an over-honed can be as little as 100 strokes or 500 or more, and somewhere in the middle there, between the bevel setter and the over-honed edge is a perfectly comfortable and sharp enough edge.

When honing a razor I am always looking for the sharp-enough edge with the minimum number of strokes, and the I add a few more carefully practiced strokes to just kick it up a notch. The difference between a HHT-4 and HHT-5 is just a few, less than a dozen strokes usually with clear water, the same between HHT's 3&4. Adding 100 more strokes to a razor that is already sharp-enough will not make it sharper and sharper, if it did than 20,000 strokes would make 20,000 times sharper.
just my opinion,

Alex Gilmore

+1. I have experienced exactly this a few times in the past.

Originally Posted by kimo

School me on steel hardness. I have 7 straights, all older ones. Most are Wade & Butcher, sword and crown, keystone, and double duck. Are these considered soft or hard steel?

Wade and butchers Are rather soft, while sword and crown (ERN) are rather hard. I haven't tried a double duck, since there are really rare in my part of the world.