Thread: Is this right?

My 2 cents...

If you are talking about japanese natural finishing stones then soft stones are easier for a beginner to use and hard stones require a better understanding of what you doing.

If your talking about synthetic waterstones, they are all super easy to use.

Hard or soft, it's all about learning your stones. You will not hear a negative thing said about the Shapton GS, Naniwa SS, or Norton stones from someone who knows these stones. If they do say something negative about them, they don't know what they are talking about.

Natural stones are great, but I would recommend learning to hone on one of the above synthetic sets as it will help you to learn to hone much easier...then you can get to the experimentation on the naturals & the rest of the stuff. It's truely an adventure and humbling experience.

In general the only difference for Honing razors is the Feedback from the stones...

In general the harder the steel the softer the stone should be...

In general Razor Steel ain't that hard.

In general the difficulty in honing razors is knowing when to shift grits or dilutuions...

Note all the "in generals" because as soon as you think you have it figured out, a razor will cross yer path that will mess with yer brain

Originally Posted by shooter74743

Hard or soft, it's all about learning your stones. You will not hear a negative thing said about the Shapton GS, Naniwa SS, or Norton stones from someone who knows these stones. If they do say something negative about them, they don't know what they are talking about.

Natural stones are great, but I would recommend learning to hone on one of the above synthetic sets as it will help you to learn to hone much easier...then you can get to the experimentation on the naturals & the rest of the stuff. It's truely an adventure and humbling experience.

I second this, synthetics are MUCH easier to learn on. They are straightforward and they give the same result over and over. Their only downsides are soak time and tendency to clog, glaze, and dish. They are fast and consistent, 2 things that make it much easier when you are new.

Eventually we all get bored with them and frustrated with constantly soaking and lapping them.