Thread: I have never honed a razor ... yet

I get the progression going from dull to finished. Please educate me on the barber hone. Is it just touch up?

A barber hone was used by barbers to touch up a razor that was starting to pull. They often carried one in their pocket and, with some shaving lather to lubricate the hone, ran the blade lightly over it a few times to refresh the edge.

There are members here who ,when they first started out, kept a straight razor going for quite a while using only a strop and a barber hone.

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Barber hones vary a lot in their grit level. The Swaty and the Apart are what you want. Both are proven performers for maintaining an edge.
Trying to use one for all stages of the honing progression takes some skill. Leave that task for later.
Be aware that the concentration of abrasives in them is very high so they cut fast. Use 5-10 careful laps with light pressure when maintaining an edge. Repeat if necessary.

Yes, do be careful with a barber hone, they can be aggressive and probably the cause of many trashed vintage razors.

You can maintain a razor with a good barber hone or any high grit natural hone and a good strop with linen and leather. Learning to strop well can also keep you shaving well for a long time.

A small hard Ark can also maintain and produce a fine shaving edge without the aggression of a barber hone. 6inch Black or Translucent stones are not expensive.

Get some magnification, a 60-100x Carson Micro Brite, is a good handheld magnifier, ($10) and you will see the condition of your edges and if you are making progress. Really any magnification will tell you more than the naked eye.

Learning to maintain a razor on a high grit hone is the best way to ease into honing. At the least it will keep you shaving for a long time. And when you do get into full progression honing, you will know what a good shaving edge should feel and look like.

This might give you some ideas, the technique will work on many of the stones Euclid mentioned above just more laps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP-GUeN_yBs&t=16s

I have tried barber hones and I still have a couple of 3-line Swatys but haven't used them in a few years. I have found that for myself, they don't leave much of a shaving edge without the lather and gradually diminishing pressure. Holding in hand as in Glen's video works IMHO better than bench honing. He is correct in not trying to roll the razor. The hone actually rolls in the hand if you are using an x stroke and going from heel leading to slightly toe leading, sort of a windshield wiper stroke. I do use a bit more and a bit thicker lather but any improvement in viscosity and lubrication is beneficial.

Their only legit use, IMHO, is touching up an edge. With lather, they perform at about the 8k level. With water, you can compare them to a 6k King or similar.

If you just can't get the hang of holding such a thin hone in hand, you can make a holder out of a piece of 2x4. Easiest with a router... just router out a 3/16" deep rectangle exactly the size of the hone. A very sharp chisel works, too. Then trim and plane the outside faces and give it a couple coats of varnish if you like. Alternately you can grasp the hone at the stamping with your thumb on top of the hone as long as you are careful, but I prefer resting it in the palm of the hand as in the above video.

Barber hones have been used as part of a progression but with underwhelming results. To me they are more a part of shaving history, than a modern solution.

Your best entry into honing is the thing that you will be doing the most, which is touching up an edge that has gone a bit dull through normal use. As a beginner, the easiest way is with a 12k Naniwa Superstone or maybe a Shapton, or else 1u lapping film which is my usual preference. Next easiest is a well lapped and burnished ultra hard Arkansas stone-- a translucent or a surgical black.With one of these stones, it is all about the surface, since they do not self slurry and if they did, the particle size would be a bit coarse. It's all about the surface. Once you lap these stones, they stay lapped for a long time. This is not the sort of stone you lap before every use or every 3 or 4 uses. The surface is not even broken in at that point. Think of this type stone as nature's ultra fine file. The finer the surface, the slower it cuts and the shallower the scratches. So after lapping it is important to burnish the stone. You don't usually need to do that with synthetics but you do with an Arkie. You can continue the lapping on lapping film to about 3u, or just hone a big stainless steel chef knife or something on it. The viscosity of your oil or other honing fluid also determines how fast the stone is. The slower, the better. The shallower the cut, the better the refinement and polish on the bevel.

Anyway, refreshing your edge is your gateway drug. Once you can do that properly, you can apply your skill set to a progression. Progressive honing is the same as synthetic stone edge maintenance, for the most part, with the extra dimension of the coarse to fine grit progression. Each stone must completely obliterate the coarser scratches of the previous, coarser stone, replacing them with its own finer scratch pattern. If one stage is not allowed to do its job properly, you got a problem. Lapping film works in the same manner. The real exceptional stage of honing is not part of the progression at all. It is setting the bevel. Setting the bevel actually forms the edge, by removing steel in a controlled manner calculated to result in a nice flat bevel face on each side, and their intersecting to form an apex which is the actual edge. Trying to do this with a finer stone simply takes too long and wears the stone. So we use a relatively coarse stone, typically between 600 and 2000 grit. Occasionally a razor needs a lot of help due to sloppy grinding or decades of sloppy honing, or big chips and dings in the edge, and a coarser stone is used initially.

So my bottom line suggestion is forget about the barber hone for now, even though it COULD be used to give you a SORT OF shave ready edge. The cheap way is to get a 1" thick, 3" x 12" piece of cast acrylic from TAP Plastics to use as a plate, and some 1u lapping film. 3M brand, type 262x in regular 8-1/2" x 11 sheets, is the gold standard. NanoLapTech 26M full size sheets is very good, and the product sold by ThorLabs in the 9" x 13" sheets is also good. There is a lot of stuff being sold that is called lapping film or more commonly given a name that "sounds like" lapping film, and it is not what you want at all. It may be called polishing film, finishing film, microsurfacing film, polishing paper, lapping paper, finishing paper, microfinishing paper, microsurfacing paper, any number of things but you want lapping film. The film sticks to the plate with water, using surface tension and not adhesive. It must be applied carefully, with no lint or dust or hairs or bubbles or other debris under it. The result is a dead flat honing surface that never needs to be lapped because the plate is never in contact with the razor. It doesn't warp or swell. It is light enough to hold in hand. It won't break if you drop it.When the film wears out, you replace it. I cut mine in thirds, lengthwise, and that gives me plenty of honing real estate to work with. Cost to get started is just chimp change. about $13 for the plate. A couple bucks a sheet for the film. A sheet makes three pieces, each of which is good for at least a dozen razors, maybe twice that. For a full progression you would also want 3u, 9u, 15u, and 30u film.

For a stone used as a refresh stone, the Naniwa 12k SuperStone is popular, and for good reason. It's not cheap, but you will be using it for years. It will need to be lapped before you use it the first time, and frequently thereafter, because a flat honing surface is very important for best results, and that means flatter than eyeball flat. How to lap your stones is a topic best left to another thread, maybe. And when you graduate to full progression honing, the Naniwa 12k will serve you well as your finisher.

Originally Posted by DZEC

A barber hone was used by barbers to touch up a razor that was starting to pull. They often carried one in their pocket and, with some shaving lather to lubricate the hone, ran the blade lightly over it a few times to refresh the edge.

There are members here who ,when they first started out, kept a straight razor going for quite a while using only a strop and a barber hone.

Bit late, but figured I'd chime in anyway. I've got a Dovo that's seen nothing but touch ups on a 3 line Swaty and linen/leather strop for going on 3 years now. They're a working man's hone and it shows in their performance. Most won't produce the finest shave known to man kind (though I do have a few that are finer and less aggressive than the Swaty), but at minimum they should bring your edge from kinda dull and tuggy to capable of a close, clean, and comfortable shave in 5 to 10 strokes when used precisely as DZEC indicated.

The fact that they're small form factor, quick, and good enough for government work is what's drawn me to them. If a razor doesn't shave to my (low) expectation, instead of setting it aside and picking out another blade to strop, or pausing in the middle of a shave and heading into the other room to break out the honing set, I snatch the barber hone out of the cabinet, lather it up, touch up the blade, and finish my shave maybe 45 seconds to a minute slower than I otherwise might have. I don't have the time so sit down with my hone sets and chase the perfect edge for hours like I once did. Barber hones cut the maintenance time down to the point that I can still use and enjoy straights, otherwise I'd back to disposables or safety razors just due to time constraints.

I've used my 3 line Swatty as a finishing stone, in a honing progression. The results were better than anticipated, though it got a heap of leather put to it.

Reminiscent of a Ark, finisher. Quite, keen. Well polished stria. JMHO