Your Ideal Barber's Hone

So I've been thinking a lot about barber's hones lately.

As we all all aware, a barber's hone is a maintentance tool for when an edge is already refined and shave ready. Now I have really good hones that give me a great edge on pretty much any razor I use them on. But when it's time to touch up a razor that just turned on me, I go through almost as much as initial honing in equipment drag out, so I wait until I have 5 or 6 and then touch up all at one time - I am sure other people touch them up as soon as required.

So I was then thinking, well, the barber's of old didn't have the selection of hones we have available to us - so enter the man made barber's hone. Then I thought, well what the heck, why isn't a small section of like a Naniwa 12k a barber's hone? Furnther, I thought, I really like two sided barber's hones, because they satisfy what I would do anyhow, which is drop one grade and then go to my finisher. I realize that is not as fast cutting as a barber's hone - but seriously, I don't have twelve people in my shave den all waiting for a shave. ;)

So here is my question. If you were to take 2 peices of your favorite hones and glue them back-to-back to form a small two sided barber's hone to keep on your counter, what would be your choices?

At the moment, I would take a small piece of a Norton 8k and glue it to the back of a piece of escher - voila!

I think I would choose a frictionite or a super punjab.

If I couldn't have that, I'd have a super hard coticule, a hard trans arkansas, or a hard japanese stone and tomonagura as my only stone. Wouldn't need two sides as long as the razor only went to the stone and never met a loaded hanging strop. I would choose a vintage carbon steel razor to go along with those since they get along a lot better with natural stones.

Any of JimmyHAD's that he'll donate to me gratis!

That sounds like a good use for lapping film! a piece of 2 micron, and a piece of 1 micron or 0.5 micron, and you'd be all set.

. charles

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Originally Posted by DaveW

I think I would choose a frictionite or a super punjab....

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+1...My choices as well. The Firctionite '00' especially... :)

Mine would be Shapton GS 16K & Y/G Escher. Mine aren't glued together, but 10-12 x strokes on 16K followed by 10-20 x on escher works to bring back that wonderful edge EVERY time.

I think that a small combo of my Chosera 10K with a Suehiro Gokumyo 20k would suit me perfectly:)

In natural Stones, a Nakayama Kiita backed by a Y/G Escher would be tops!

That is if I for some reason should be without my Norton barber hone;)