Thread: Swaty surprise

I've always wanted to try a Swaty but every one I bid on got swiped out from under me, so I bid on 2, hoping to get 1...and got them both (!) The first one arrived today & I was shocked by how coarse & aggressive it is. It's almost as coarse as my cushioned strop hones! Are all Swatys like this? And are you meant to shave right off the hone?! Hard to imagine that would feel good.

Is it a 2 or 3 line swaty? I have a 3 line and hear that the 2 line swaty is somewhat coarser.

Update: I got the other hone. One is a 2-line and the other is a 3-line. Are you sure you don't have that backwards? The 3-line (the one I was talking about in the original post) is so coarse, it might just replace 1500-grit sandpaper for establishing a bevel. The 2-line is a lot finer; one could conceivably shave off it (though the Gem & Lithide hones are both finer still).

Backwards? Maybe, I dont havethe2 line swaty to make the comparison.

There is no guarantee of grit size in barber hones. They vary, sometimes a lot.

Carney barker.... "Step right up! Pay your money and take your chances! Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose".

Hones are seldom a loss, you need to figure out where in the honing process a particular hone fits.


Just my two cents,

I had a swaty. It was an Austrian swaty. I sold it. But as I recall it was a good finishing hone. I also remember it improved significantly when I lapped a fresh flat surface on it using 1000 grit wet and dry sandpaper (used wet).

Originally Posted by English

I had a swaty. It was an Austrian swaty. I sold it. But as I recall it was a good finishing hone. I also remember it improved significantly when I lapped a fresh flat surface on it using 1000 grit wet and dry sandpaper (used wet).

English raises a good point. Did you lap em first?

Joke raises a good point, too. It's possible that the previous owner tried the "lap it on a concrete block" technique that someone advocated a while ago. As we all know, concrete blocks are not guaranteed to be flat and must be lapped themselves, on a select section of fully cured sidewalk, to be at their full performance potential.

--tongue inserted so far into cheek my fingers are choking

Yes, I lapped both of them on sandpaper, using a piece of thick plate glass that I keep for that purpose.

I've had a chance to play with them a bit more. I now believe the 3-line Swaty is actually COARSER than my cushioned strop hone (!) It is also very fast-cutting and has a much higher coefficient of friction than any of my other hones. I think the 2-line Swaty sits somewhere between the C.S. hone and the Gem hone. I think the Swaty-3 will be useful for completely resetting the bevel on edges that I've convexed into oblivion with the Cr02.

I think Randy is on the money here: barber hones have a lot of variance in grit size from batch to batch.

BTW, both hones say "AUSTRIA" on them, if that matters.

Wow, if your 3 line is that coarse, you definitely got one from a bad batch! I have a 3 line that I recently picked up and aside from the brown color, the appearance of the hone and it's fineness reminds me of a high grit ceramic stone. If the swaty was white instead of brown, with it's mottled appearance, I would even say it looks identical to somewhere between my Shapton 8k and Shapton 16k! By far the smoothest and hardest barber hone I have personally owned.

Interestingly, if you look at the back of the 3rd edition of Straight Razors, there is an old advertisement for instructions on honing, some hone refresher and something else. In that same offer back then.....they also say that they include a Swaty (I think it's a 3 line IIRC) for free. That's right, they GAVE AWAY swatys as part of an offer for something else.

Chris L