Thread: What Exaclty Is a Barber's Hone?

I read a lot of threads on barber's hones, since I recently picked a few up. This was one of them. There are a lot of conflicting opinions on everything from the grit rating to how long the edge lasts to whether or not they can be lapped.

For my money's worth, I'm going to bet that the edge lasts just as long as an edge put on by any other hone. The grit rating has to be somewhere in the 8k neighborhood, unless it was a junk hone in it's day. And I'll bet lapping them won't hurt them if you go through a full progression and polish it up.

These were the tools of the trade. A barber had to get a reliable, shave-worthy edge off them. And he couldn't be stopping every other shave to whip one of these puppies out to freshen up and strop his blade. As for whether they can be lapped, the factory had to do something to them after they popped out of the mold to clean and polish them up.

I think the problem with them is like anything else. They're treated improperly, or used and evaluated by novices (or folks that just had access to something they like better). People with more experience are, from what I can tell, going to prefer a natural finisher over the edge off a synthetic, and the ones that DO use synthetics tend to lean towards Naniwa 12k/Shapton Glass 16k or 30k. Comparing 50 to 100 year old barber hones with varying manufacturing tolerances in varying stages of disrepair to a modern synthetic with tight tolerances new off the shelf, it's easy to see why the barbers hones seem to be a hit or miss type of affair.

Then we have people like Utopian that went a good 10 years with nothing but a barber's hone to keep his edge keen. I just finished flattening the 2 I obtained and getting them into a usable state. We'll see how it goes, but I remain unconvinced that a proven barber's hone, Swaty for example, would fail to hold an edge as long as anything else I have in my honing stable at least.

Found a pretty good answer! And it is surprising to say the least...

https://scienceofsharp.wordpress.com...e-barber-hone/

So basically the reason a barber's hone is both very quick to cut, and very fine is because it is made with very ROUGH abrasive material, and a very fine/hard binder. Then the surface is prepped and polished until it's glazed and making very fine, yet fast, cuts. This explains why they can cut so fast, yet still leave a nice edge. It also explains why lapping can 'ruin them.' If you wear out the binder with a 320 grit DMT, you're left with exposed 600 grit abrasive. The only way you're going to get that back into shape is to polish it out further - probably beyond 2,000 grit afforded by wet sanding.

Originally Posted by technonine

I am not (yet) acquinted with honing razors,

This is only theory and obviously in practice this doesn't always have to be the case. Thus this can create more confusion in the discussion.

Yeah, practice might be helpful.

Grit does not tell the entire story, but it's the easy thing for people to cling to because it has a number that can be attributed to each hone. This is a constant mistake. Yes grit size does matter, but so does

the nature of that grit and
its concentration and
the binder mixed with that grit and
the surface prep of the hone also matters.

Utopian knows his barber hones folks. I think this is a very good statement.

I've played around with them a bit too, and find myself mainly rating there relatively. That is, if I have 3 or 4, I rank them by how fast/clean they restore the edge. I have two favorite 2-sided barber hones, and the 4 surfaces actually form a nice sequence. 3-4 light strokes on each up the series yields a very nicely refreshed razor and it "lasts" as long as any nice edge imparted by regular honing. In fact, when I was in Israel for 12 weeks in 2012, I had 2 straight razors that I maintained entirely with barber hones and stropping. When I got home, they didn't need any honing on regular stones. They were fine.

Originally Posted by Utopian

Yeah, practice might be helpful.

Grit does not tell the entire story, but it's the easy thing for people to cling to because it has a number that can be attributed to each hone. This is a constant mistake. Yes grit size does matter, but so does

the nature of that grit and
its concentration and
the binder mixed with that grit and
the surface prep of the hone also matters.

The best I can intuit is the (most probable) medium used in these old barber hones is carborundum (Aluminum Oxide). The material measured in my post above was 30 microns (600 grit). The binding material, to the best of my ability to figure is probably a kiln fired pottery/ceramic material. At least when we're talking about better quality, longer lasting hones that can be used dry, with water, shave lather, or oil. I'll have to do more research on ceramics before I hazard a guess what exactly the binding material is, but that seems to be the biggest and best kept secret about the better barber hones - which makes sense all things considered.

Surface prep is easy - higher polish = finer edge. But depending on the binding material and mold quality they may not have needed all that much attention. Just pop from mold, let cool, burnish, and hone away. It's been an interesting little side venture learning how these things were made.

I frequently use a Swaty clone for touch ups. The edge lasts just as long as any other edge.

I just came across this thread, interesting information! I found a couple of barber hones the other day and am pondering giving them a go, but the mystery grit is a deterrent...

For what it's worth, I'm happy with the Swaty I just picked up. The Amercan barber hone of undetermined manufacture I've yet to hone a blade and give a proper shave test. Perhaps when I'm finished working on the Morley resto I started I'll use it to finish the blade and see what happens.

Originally Posted by Ernie1980

I just came across this thread, interesting information! I found a couple of barber hones the other day and am pondering giving them a go, but the mystery grit is a deterrent...

No!!!

Please don't let the lack of a grit number deter you. Coticules and thuringians and japanese hones and other hones have been used for centuries without a grit number assigned to them. Steel was rubbed on stone and a sharper edge was created without any numerical assignment. Barber hones were created primarily for edge maintenance and almost ALL of them are quite competent at that task. Please just go ahead and try each of your hones. Use them to touch up your razors as they need to be touched up--doing just 4-6 strokes. Hopefully, you will be surprised at how well they work.

If they are imprinted, what are the brands of the hones?

Out of curiosity I recently acquired a Swaty and after tons of reading here I decided to lap it first. Glad I did for it was in need. As advised finishing up with Vaseline slather/soak/cure then I'll give it a try in a week or so.