Thread: Poor newbie's hone set

Originally Posted by Barbu

So would you say my 1k/6k is no good at all? Thought I could get away with 1k/6k and then spend more time on the 12k Naniwa I ordered, skipping the 8k.(Followed by chromium and leather ofc) Here's a pic of the box.

Can't rightly say as I've no experience with that hone, nor have I read anything about it.

If it suffers what many low cost hones or other hones that we generally don't use for razors do, the 1K will be aggressive and leave a jagged edge, or the binder will be soft and allow for auto slurrying. It also won't be as fine as it should/could be. 1K acting more like a 600 or 800 grit hone, 6K behaving more like a 4K or 5K stone.

IF that 6K is in the 5K-6K ball park you should be able to work with that. Generally speaking you want to double the grit rating (or half the grit size) when moving up hones. With my Shapton set I go 1/2/5/12K and going from 5K to 12K literally takes 10-20 light strokes. This may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, but if that hone is decent quality you should have no problem transitioning to your naniwa 12K.

I wasn't aware you had anything for the lower grits and was simply offering up a known effective lower cost option.

Edit: Reviews I read about it on Amazon aren't promising. A lot of folks say that the 1K wears fast, to me that is a red flag. I think it's natural for the lower grit portion of a combination stone to wear faster than it's finer component, but I also read about chunks breaking off while honing and other things that sound less than optimal for any type of honing, but especially detrimental to razor honing where you're going to need an edge that is not only sharp but pleasant to run over the surface of your skin.