Thread: Curious phenomenon?

I know it's recommended you hone with one hand and most folks who use two later regret it. In my case having learned all this way before these sites existed I kind of developed my own two handed approach to honing which works well for me.

But, one of the things I find and we have discussed this before is the issue of being able to tell the progress of your honing not by the various tests we always discuss but by the feel and sound of the blade on the hone. I find often times with two fingers very lightly on the hone I can feel very subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) sensations and vibrations through the blade in my fingers which are pretty strong indicators of the state of the blade. I find it holds true more in the earlier stages of honing but even in the later stages I can still get some cues as to what is going on and when it's time to go on to the next stage in honing. Now I'm not saying you can tell when the blade is shave ready based on feel and sound but often times it tells me when to start arm hair shaving for instance and I'm usually pretty close.

I find in the very final stages with some razors it doesn't work at all so it's no truly iron clad test but maybe just another indicator.

As an example, last night I was working on my Ralf Aust razor I just got and I was initially using the Norton 1K to redo the bevel. I had initially visually inspected the bevel and it seemed to look good but there was this roughness in the shave that mild honing would not remove. As I started honing I noticed this incredible roughness and very pronounced vibration through the blade, probably the most I ever felt in any razor. As I progressed the sensation decreased until it disappeared. When I switched to the 4K it returned but was more muted and really through the 8K it was there to some extent. it was only in the later strokes on the 8K where the feel became silky smooth and I started getting the scratchy glass sound and through the Escher this became more pronounced.

I was just curious if other have found this to be true.

I switch...

I do the opening strokes using two hands and control the edge, and close out each stone with 5 super light finishing laps with one hand to see if there are any spots that "Feel" off to me...

I do the same thing as you bigspendur.

I never felt comfortable using the one hand strokes, so pretty much from the get go I used 2 hands. Well, more like 1 hand and a supporting finger from the other hand.
On narrower hones, like a couple of my finishers, I use a one hand approach.
The feedback from the hones seems more "correct" to me when using two hands. It's easier to feel when I'm done on each stone.

I will keep trying to get the same sense of the edge with one hand honing, but so far I haven't quite reached that level.

I use one hand. On some finishing hones, with some razors, I can feel like I'm where I want to be by how the blade feels on the hone, but not always.

This is strange, because for me it is the other way. When I use 2 hands, I don't feel the edge as good as with one hand. I tend to do bevel setting with two, and the switch to one hand for sharpening and finishing. If I have a badly warped razor, I use 2 hands all the way, with a light touch in the end.

Interesting in a production razor. I had that same feeling with a custom razor made out of O-1 that I honed a few months ago. My thoughts were that I was hitting a patch of harder steel. I switched over to my Shapton GS stones and the feeing only lasted a couple passes in each stone on the progression. I figured it was due to the aggressive nature of the stones that it went away rather quickly. I forget the proper term, but I figure there was more austintite or martinsite (the one that is the crystalline structure on the molecular level...not sure) at the toe 1/3 than the rest of the blade, on this particular blade. I've only noticed this once and it was when I was using the naniwas.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I use one hand. On some finishing hones, with some razors, I can feel like I'm where I want to be by how the blade feels on the hone, but not always.

Same here.