Thread: Pyramid Shapton honing

I had an interesting experience with my Shapton 8000 and 16000 hones. I have a 7/8 W & B For Barber Use Only wide body that I was polishing some dark spots off the blade and I hit the edge with my buffing wheel. It was just enough to warrant touch up with the stones so I tried pyramiding between my Shappy 8000 and my Shappy 16000.

I did 10 passes each on the 8000/16000 stones then 5 each. I went 3/5 and 1/5 to finish. I stropped it 40 each on my cotton SRP strop/ Latigo leather strop/ English Bridle leather strop and the blade was HHT scary sharp. Shaving was a dream. Smooth and easy are the phrases of the day. I tried the same rotation on a Genco Heavy and a Torrey that I am selling with similar results. Has anyone tried this?

Thanks for your comments.
Best regards,
300WSM

I guess I have stumbled upon something... and will discuss it with myself! What ever....

I'm not using shapton's, so can't comment. As long as it's working...don't fix it!

Originally Posted by 300WSM

I had an interesting experience with my Shapton 8000 and 16000 hones. I have a 7/8 W & B For Barber Use Only wide body that I was polishing some dark spots off the blade and I hit the edge with my buffing wheel. It was just enough to warrant touch up with the stones so I tried pyramiding between my Shappy 8000 and my Shappy 16000.

I did 10 passes each on the 8000/16000 stones then 5 each. I went 3/5 and 1/5 to finish. I stropped it 40 each on my cotton SRP strop/ Latigo leather strop/ English Bridle leather strop and the blade was HHT scary sharp. Shaving was a dream. Smooth and easy are the phrases of the day. I tried the same rotation on a Genco Heavy and a Torrey that I am selling with similar results. Has anyone tried this?

Thanks for your comments.
Best regards,
300WSM

what you are saying is confusing.
That is why we have to ask question to understand .
My problem is this.
Have you ever had professionally honed blade?
Do you know what is properly honed blade? It is not the scary sharp edge i would say now.
i know shapton 16 how acts that is why i am having trouble to believe to your experiment.
sorry i am not trying to be rude. This is the best way i can explain my feeling about your thread,
let me explain more.
You are saying your edge has been hit by buffing and you restored it just doing passes on 8 and 16k shaptons.
doesn't make sense. you should go at least 4k level and make a lot laps then you may got edge which you can take to 8k and 16k.
Then you are saying you got same result with 2 more razors. without telling early condition of the razor's i cannot say anything about this 2 blades.
gl

Actually, to me this makes perfect sense. Considering that the Pyramid method is an incremental method, what you did with these two stones is a good use of the technique. I'm betting if you use it for razors not needing a lot of work, it will continue to work well for you.

Please keep us posted.

Thanks,

Lynn

Gentlemen,
Thank you all for taking the time to comment on my discovery as I have not heard of this pyramid routine before including this fine forum. I will try to answer all of the questions posed to me.

gl - I have used quite a few razors honed by what you would call a "professional" including a very fine 7/8 W & B from Jimmy that was the best shaver I have tried so far in my brief straight razor experience (about a year now). This is the one I tried the 8000/16000 pyramid to restore the edge after using this fine razor in my daily rotation. It is not as smooth as Jimmy's honing job but it is close.

You are right about scary sharp not always being the best shave. I learned this as a professional meatcutter and butchering dozens of elk and deer. My knives carry a working edge. I know this does not necessarily translate to razors but I understand the concept. The Genco Heavy that I was speaking of gave me a tie for the best shave that I have experienced to date after the 8000/16000 pyramid and stropping. It was neck and neck to Jimmy's original honing of the W&B 7/8 and very smooth. The condition of the Genco before I tried this new pyramid method was restoring the edge after much use (on my barbed wire beard) and an exhausted CRO2 effort. The Torrey was in about the same condition. I am now trying this on an 8/8 B&S Cowvan I recently purchased. I had to reset the bevel on this one with a Shappy 1000. It is on to 4000/8000 pyramid and then I will try the 8000/16000 just for chuckles. I will keep you posted.

Lynn,
Thank you for your experienced observation as I thought the same thing. What makes pyramiding work with courser stones should work with finer ones as well. However, time and experience will tell. I will let you know what I discover.
Best regards,
Denny
300WSM

This is why i put up that message.
You said on your original post you have hit the blade to buffer.
My understanding was if you hit the shave ready edge to the buffer that blade will have chips.
In this situation i didn't think you would be able to just use shapton 8/16k and make blade shave ready with just 44 strokes total.
I did ask Lynn about this and in fact you could just dull the edge without any chips etc.
in this case you could make edge shave ready.
This is all .
thank you for answering my questions. gl

gl,
Sorry for the misunderstanding. The razor was about due for a restore as I have used it steadily since I procured it from Jimmy. I was polishing a spot on the blade from an accidental water splash left overnight on the blade. I set my razors out with the blade open in a dry spot overnight after using them to be sure everything under the handles is bone dry. Somehow a drop of water dropped on the blade overnight in spite of my careful drying creating a darkened spot on this otherwise pristine blade. Being the anal individual that I am I was carefully polishing the blade length wise with the red finish stick and my cotton buffing wheel being careful to avoid the cutting edge. I thought I may have touched the edge with the wheel. I was not certain to be honest. If I did it was a light pass across the edge lengthwise and not into the edge. Since I needed to restore it anyway I tried the method that I described to you in my original post. I did not want to bore anyone with a lengthy diatribe but because of the misunderstanding (this was my fault) I am happy to relate the details to clear it up for you. I really appreciate your interest in my post and your informed comments.
Best regards,
Denny
300WSM

Hi Denny, glad to hear that W&B worked out well for you. I have never tried pyramiding with the higher grits but now you have piqued my curiosity and I'll have to take a shot at it. Cool when people try new things and make discoveries.

Jimmy,
I love that big wide body W&B and what ever you did to hone it certainly worked. I do have to report that I tried the 8000/16000 pyramid on an 8/8 Cowvan razor I scored off the Bay and it worked very well. This was after I set the bevel with a Shappy 1000 and pyramided 4000/8000 per Lynn's directions in the Pyramid Wiki.

I shaved this AM with it and my big mug is as smooth as a baby's posterior. It was overall smooth with a little irritation at the base of my neck which for me is standard operating procedure. More to come.

Thanks for taking the time to comment, my friend, and I hope my new found procedure works for you. So far I have had excellent results.
Best regards,
Denny
300WSM