Thread: Barber Hones

Originally Posted by mrbison

3. Finally, if these hones work the way I think they do, what's the point of using CrOx pastes and sprays when you can just do a few laps on your barbers hone?

I agree with everything Alan just said, but I'd add a few more things to this one. Of course, this is all opinion and dependent on your particular skill/style/preferences, so take with a grain of salt.

First of all, I own a barber hone, and back when I only owned one razor I used it as intended all the time - for touch-ups. For the super quick touch-up, I really think a vintage barber hone is peerless. Pastes and sprays tend to be slow. 5 laps on my barber hone does more than 30 on my pasted strop. Since it's a 20 sided hone, it can bring an edge a long way back. However, the edge it produces is never 'quite' as good as a proper honing on modern stones, followed with a pasted strop. So, the pastes tend produce a finer edge, but require a good edge to begin with and take longer, while the barber hone is faster, more efficient and 'almost' as good. Again, YMMV.

On the other hand, I haven't used my barber hone in over a year, and will probably be putting it on the classifieds soon along with about half my razors. The reason being, I have so many razors right now that most of them do nothing but sit. If I start my shave and decide my razor isn't keen enough, I put it in the re-hone pile and grab a different razor. Why reach for a barber hone to touch up my razor while I'm getting ready for work, when I've got a dozen more that are shave ready and another dozen needing to be honed that can keep it company?

Even then, it takes MONTHS at this point to get down to few enough razors in the shave-ready pile to be worth pulling out the hones. Instead, the hones get pulled out because I made another trip to the antique store. My last trip to the antique store netted a Rogers and 4 Wade & Butchers for a song. By the time I got them all honed up, I had so many razors in the 'ready pile' that I didn't bother with the stack of not-so-readys, which is about 8 razors right now.