Thread: Hone Format for Knives Scaled to Razors

There are some pretty small historic hones out there that are perfectly functional for razors.

The celebrated water hone for example often comes in a really small format 5x1. It's more of a stick than a hone. With careful use they work perfectly fine. There are also a lot of coticules out there at 140-150mm x 40mm (5.5 - 6 x 1.5 inches). Perfectly fine to hone on, In fact my own is this size.

I guess I am just reading this wrong

Are you trying to say that an 8x3 hone is too big for a razor ???

Honestly I have honed razors on 12 x 4 down to 1 x 3 they all work, it is the guy pushing that steel that has to make the required adjustments

Also defining the word "Hone" would be good here, because touching up an edge on a barber's hone and setting a bevel on an E-baby on the same size hone are two different animals...

Maybe I am just missing something in your posts.. Because this makes zero sense



"By 3" stone, I assume you mean 3" wide, not 3" long. With 3" wide, you have the option to move up and down more than from side to side, so the wear is not the same as with a laterally-biassed X-stroke.

This is just my take on it, but with a relatively short stone, more side-to-side movement is involved. In this way, the heel sees little contact with the stone relative to the middle of the blade and the toe. So to make up for it, some up-and-down movement needs to be made, addressing the heel. This shouldn't be an issue with a relatively wide stone as the middle and toe have been seeing equal wear given equal pressure being applied. With narrower stones, say in the 1" to 1-1/2" width range, this also is not as much of an issue as the blade's contact is lessened in relation to the blade's length with each pass. Again, it's a matter of the heel receiving some extra attention in both cases. However, with a stone in the 2" width range, there both the heel and toe are not in constant contact in making the side-to-side pass, whereas the middle of the blade is. So both the heel and the toe need to be accounted for in this way.

This part is especially vague

Some would say that the width of the stone doesn't matter. I would agree with this so far as I would be consistently using a rolling X-stroke. But here again, the use of a narrower stone would not require the need for a rolling X-stroke (although it could be used there)"

To someone who doesn't have much experience with honing, this is all very confusing. Just when I think I'm making progress, someone posts something like this. However, I get good results with what I have been taught previously by the video's in the SRP library. The stones match what they use. I think I'll stick with them on this one! Wow!!!

I have historic hones from approximately 1"x3" and 2"x4", 3"x5" and larger. The 2"x4" Belgian's and Thuringian's were often carried in a barber's pocket or apron to refresh a blade in use even to the time the law no longer allowed real straight razor shaves. I prefer a larger/ normal sized hone for every day honing. 3"x8" is a very useful size and has a modern following plus being easily learned by allowing full strokes across the entire blade..
~Richard

Looks like I've stirred up a tempest; that wasn't my intention. My aim is stated in the title of the thread, "Hone Format for Knives Scaled to Razors," the example being an 8" knife blade length being honed on an 8" x 3" synthetic sharpening stone as adapted to the relative scale of, say, a ubiquitous 5/8 Solingen full hollow razor. I note that the guy in the video can run through knife-sharpening progressions starting out at JIS 400 and wonder how this might be adapted to razors, scale-wise. Not that the method of honing would be the same, just the scale/size relationship and whether or not this is viable.

By "hone," I mean a sharpening stone used for sharpening purposes, natural or synthetic. I prefer the term "hone" used collectively, as a "stone" more specifically applies to natural stones in my opinion. A barber's hone is what it is, a barber's hone.

I prefer to hand-hold the hone/stone in honing razors, rather than on a bench. Smaller stones are more convenient than large bench stones in this regard as they are lighter in weight and scaled more to the size of the hand. This has led me to work with smaller stones more or less by default, and this makes me curious as to reason why the majority of folks today seem to be honing their razors with relatively large stones on benches.

In watching the video in question, I had arrived at ~4" x ~1-1/8" sized honing surface as an approximate equivalent. I just wanted some confirmation that this was so, and was not too far off base, and the first reply was encouraging to me in this regard. From this, I'd hoped for further confirmation in this way. Comments like having success with a 5" x 1" Thuri are therefore helpful.

Using small hones/stones hand-held in honing razors, one has to alter the approach relative to bench-mounted honing with larger stones. But going into detail about this here is not really germane to the subject of my thread, which is about scale relationship.

I for one would be interested to a link to video you mention. Then we might see what you are thinking.

I have " 1/4 nortons " and they are maybe 4" long and 1.5" wide. This is what I learned to hone my razors on and with patience and care it is just fine. A bigger or full size Norton or what ever hone you choose would be better or a luxury as stated in another comment. But at the end of the day as Glen says it is up to the fella pushing the steel as to how well a hone works or does not work. So "little " or smaller stones work just as well just take a bit more care when using them.

Originally Posted by ejmolitor37

I have " 1/4 nortons " and they are maybe 4" long and 1.5" wide. This is what I learned to hone my razors on and with patience and care it is just fine. A bigger or full size Norton or what ever hone you choose would be better or a luxury as stated in another comment. But at the end of the day as Glen says it is up to the fella pushing the steel as to how well a hone works or does not work. So "little " or smaller stones work just as well just take a bit more care when using them.

Thank you. That is the kind of confirmation I am after.

Originally Posted by 32t

I for one would be interested to a link to video you mention. Then we might see what you are thinking.

I've linked it below as requested. I was watching it yesterday relative to knife sharpening, also with the idea of possibly chopping stones like these into four pieces for razor-honing as ejmolitor37 mentions. Elsewhere, MrKnifeFanatic shows a 400 > 2000 > 8000 JIS progression in much the same way.

In glancing at the vid one more time before posting, I do now note that he is orienting the knife on the diagonal, effectively widening the stone as used to perhaps 1/2 of the blade's length, which would widen things to around 1-1/2" x 4" as scaled to a 3" length 5/8 full-hollow. A diagonal orientation is not something I normally do with razors as it would alter the shoulder relationship opposite to the heel. Rather, I tend to keep the blade's orientation perpendicular to the stone's length.

Originally Posted by Brontosaurus

I do note that he his orienting the knife on the diagonal, effectively widening the stone as used to perhaps 1/2 of the blade's length, which would widen things to around 1-1/2" x 4" as scaled to a 3" length 5/8 full-hollow. A diagonal orientation is not something I normally do with razors as it would alter the shoulder relationship opposite to the heel. Rather, I tend to keep the blade's orientation perpendicular to the stone's length.

A heel forward orientation for honing SR's is actually a good thing not a bad thing ..

Not even sure what you mean by saying it would alter the shoulder relationship