Thread: 2 Questions

First question and more important to me right now, what is the minimum grit required to start restoring a razor? My Father-In-Law gave me 2 diamond sharpeners at 260# and 380# (roughly cant remember exact atm but I know it is 2XX and 8XX) would these be atleast good to learn good technique on?

Second, is there a way to find out/figure out a grit on a stone that I have without knowing the grit? I bought one for $1 that has 2 sides and they both seem fine grits, but I know one is atleast a medium and fine..... both are smooth when rubbing fingers accross.... my F-I-L is going to dress and clean it up since the medium side is all chewed up and both sides are pretty grimy and dirty from being stored I guess. Atleast I know he knows what he is doing on that since he is a blade smith and deals with stones all the time!

Any help is appreciated!

Buying stones of known grit to compare edge results against. Sorry..Probably not what you were hoping for. On the plus side, you can take some good pics and post them here, and we'll all look at them and tell you if we think they'd be useable with razors.

As for the diamond sharpeners: I remember a post about 8 months ago where a fellah from the Army said he'd been keeping his razors shaving sharp with a little DMT pocket sharpener, and a Swaty barber hone, and a strop.

You said "restore" a razor. Usually I figure that entails a whole lotta stuff that has nothing to do with stones. So I'm figuring you simply meant "make it sharp again". Take your time, do lots of reading, and leave the Diamond sharpeners for later right now.

If your father in law has a lot of experience he might be the best able to tell you as he can hold the stone in his hand and test it.

From the sounds of things your stones are probably of to low of grit to give you good results.

You can get most necessary work done on a 1K stone, but for razors tha have bad chipping, frowns etc. a lower grit stone is helpful, many use the 325 DMT, personally I don't fancy the sound and feel of a razor on a steel plate and use a Shapton Pro 320.

When that is said, have you honed razors before? I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into blade/edge restoration without having the basic honing in place.

As for figuring out the aprox grit of an unknown stone you can take a spoon and run it a few strokes on the stone and compare the scratch pattern to other spoons ypu've done the same with, only on different stones of a known grit.
It's not 100% accurate, but you should get the aprox grit.

Originally Posted by Zephyr

You can get most necessary work done on a 1K stone, but for razors tha have bad chipping, frowns etc. a lower grit stone is helpful, many use the 325 DMT, personally I don't fancy the sound and feel of a razor on a steel plate and use a Shapton Pro 320.

When that is said, have you honed razors before? I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into blade/edge restoration without having the basic honing in place.

As for figuring out the aprox grit of an unknown stone you can take a spoon and run it a few strokes on the stone and compare the scratch pattern to other spoons ypu've done the same with, only on different stones of a known grit.
It's not 100% accurate, but you should get the aprox grit.

Never heard the spoon method good idea. Thanks

Originally Posted by regularjoe

Buying stones of known grit to compare edge results against. Sorry..Probably not what you were hoping for. On the plus side, you can take some good pics and post them here, and we'll all look at them and tell you if we think they'd be useable with razors.

As for the diamond sharpeners: I remember a post about 8 months ago where a fellah from the Army said he'd been keeping his razors shaving sharp with a little DMT pocket sharpener, and a Swaty barber hone, and a strop.

You said "restore" a razor. Usually I figure that entails a whole lotta stuff that has nothing to do with stones. So I'm figuring you simply meant "make it sharp again". Take your time, do lots of reading, and leave the Diamond sharpeners for later right now.

For the restores, I have no idea of blade quality yet.... I bought a set of three from ebay that you can see in the Razor section. And I would like to get the technique down before I drop some money into a good stone and never get it right or worse, damage the stone!