Thread: Hone Format for Knives Scaled to Razors

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)"