Thread: Minimum workable size for belgian blue

Hi all.

Quick question. What would be the minimum useful size for a belgian blue hone for a straight razor? I have come across an ebay seller in Oz who offers 4 x 1`20" begians for $22, which looks very attractive.

At present I have a Chinese 12K, a japanese waterstone of unknown grit (but I'd guess around 8000), and a DMT 600/1200 6 X 2" diasharp on the way from The Perfect Edge for bevel setting.

I'm on a rather limited budget, but even though I'm yet to sharpen this thing, let alone apply it to my face, I'm struck by this strange urge to buy more bits of rock to rub steel against. Should I be concerned?

Still working on the restoration of the great great grandfathers razor. The blade itself is done to a mirror finish, scales of stained Silver Ash are in progress. Now I just need to learn how to sharpen

Stay froody,
J.

You can get by with a 4" hone but I like a minimum of 5" and 6 or 8 is better yet for me. I think a lot of it is what you get used to. I learned to hone mostly on Norton, Shapton and Naniwa 8" hones and my stroke is geared for that length hone. I have shorter and narrower hones and it is just a matter of changing the stroke. Most of the barber hones were 4 or 5" BTW.

I was also thinking that it sounds about the size of a barber's hone, but then again, you don't usually need to do many passes on a barber's hone. I don't have any Belgian hones (yet!), but I think you'd need to do more passes on them, so you'd probably want a longer one than 4".

Another way to look at it: if you like using the hone, you'll just end up wanting a bigger one anyway.

Incidentally, not that they're the same kind of hone or anything, but the Dragon's Tongue slates are a great bargain for a natural stone of their size.

To give you some idea of scale, here's a Thuringian that's roughly 6" x 1.2"
The blue line is at approximately the 4" mark.

Personally, I think a BBW is too slow without slurry, so I wouldn't get one that wouldn't be easy to use without slurry. For me, this means at least 6 x 1.5, but bigger would be better. With short hones and slurry, you really have to stop short of the end of the hone in order to avoid pushing all the slurry off. That stop distance + the width of the blade is the amount of hone you don't get to use each pass. Probably about an inch if you have normal sized blades.

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

Personally, I think a BBW is too slow without slurry, so I wouldn't get one that wouldn't be easy to use without slurry. For me, this means at least 6 x 1.5, but bigger would be better. With short hones and slurry, you really have to stop short of the end of the hone in order to avoid pushing all the slurry off. That stop distance + the width of the blade is the amount of hone you don't get to use each pass. Probably about an inch if you have normal sized blades.

I agree... but I have been using a small BBW/Coti natural that is probably just under 5 long with great results by working up a slurry and using Lynn's circle, then x-stroke honing method. This gets past the size problem, and I use the full length on my x strokes with water after I'm done with the slurry. Hope that made sense.

But I think you will appreciate the largest hone you can justify price wise.

I use 1x4 for penknives, 3.5x2 is the smallest I'd use for a razor and that's a mini-hone. 5x3 works, and 6x2 works.. consider the hours using it; don't skimp.

If your japanese waterstone is actually 8k then a BBW won't add much to your honing sequence unless you are going to start with slurrie. With water a BBW is about 6-8k. For slurrie you would have to get a BBW rubber and a long enough BBW so you don't whipe off the slurrie.

A better addition may be a 3-5k hone for bevel setting, a 10k hone so you won't have to spend as much time on the chinese or a chinese rubber.