Thread: Honing methods thoughts / reflections

Hey all, I've just come out the other end from my first couple of months of straight shaving, and I thought I'd share a few of the thing I've learned - and need still to learn, and see what your experiences have been.

One important thing I've learned is that there are so many different views about exactly which procedure is best - made tricky by the fact that many, understandably, know what works (or seems to) for them, but might not understand all the other possibilities, how they differ, let alone the physics and reasons *why* they differ as they do. The result is that there is a tremendous advantage to trying out various methods yourself and finding which you like best for your face and shaving preferences - but that you cannot just go and get the information you need from a single source. You have to *Truly* educate yourself, go through various trial, error, and further "corrected" or amended education.

For instance, one is told that one just needs a strop and maybe a paste or two, and you can send it out to get honed once or twice a year. But that honing has be done one-size fits all (and even if you could request a specific procedure, you would have no way of knowing which to request) - and one size doesn't fit all. Or at least you miss out on a big fun / advantage of straight edge shaving, which is that ultimate personalization.

Other things in this category include the differences between "paste" (diamond) sharpening vs. stone/hone sharpening, effects of different kinds of strops, effects of different finishing/smoothing procedures, etc. Also the popularity of full hollow grinds means that one might not even know that there are wedges and half hollows, which shave *very* differently - and which can be given a "Secondary edge."

Of course, the other thing is that trying out all these different methods requires a significant outlay of money, perhaps even before you have realized the full benefits of what you are outlaying for. Sure, one can wait a few months until one has gotten pretty far with some basic setup....

Just a few thoughts.

yep... I agree fully with your thoughts. I remember Lynn commented somehwere (about honing) that he enjoys the art of it more than the science and up until that point I had never thought of the "art" of honing. As a science guy I was tryin to impose "absolute right/wrong" and "why does it work and how and what works best?", (assuming there had to be a best). I especially didn't like the idea of honing pyramids since they seemed counterintuitive to a scientific method.

What I think now is that there are lots of things that work for lots of people, and that some of them work for the wrong reasons, but the end result is still that they work.

My biggest hurdle was realizing that you have to start with a decent bevel and that it is ok to use coarser grits to get to that point. I spent many hours pushing too hard on a stone with too fine a grit polishing blades that didn't have a decent bevel...not good results... blade flexes, bevel face is un uniform, edges chip. off.. blah blah. now I use light presssure to hone and use 1000 grit Lee Valley or 3m 15 micron microabrasive sheet to set the bevel , microscope to see how its coming, then Norton 4K/8K, then CrOx honing compound on leather (also Lee Valley), then newspaper. FWIW, YMMV.

Oh, and it also took me a while to figger out that the crowd that was saying you only need to hone once a year, is not the same crowd thats saying "don't use pastes". I think if you want to stretch the time between honing you are going to have to do more than just strop 50 times a day on plain leather...