Thread: Buying a new hone

I've been reading a lot of the stuff available on SRP and I am thinking about buying water stones to replace my Norton oil stones. I looked online and found a Norton 4000/8000 waterstone for around $75.00.

Is this about right? Is there a better place to buy? Anyone know any NYC or L.I. locations where I can buy direct/in-person?

Check for Woodcraft stores. BTW what are you planing on honing?

Jonathan

Most of the ones I have seen are around that price. Might find some cheaper somewhere else, but would pay more for shipping. All come out to about the same.

Originally Posted by Datsots

BTW what are you planing on honing?

Jonathan

When I first got my SR I was a teen and I bought a Norton Bear oil stone to sharpen it. I never really got into using the SR (I think my dad started me on a SR to teach me the benefits of the Safety), and quickly switched to a Safety, then a disposable. I recently went back to a Safety and I am now going back to the SR.

So I would be using it on my old SR. I did sharpen my old SR on my oilstone last week. After reading all the posts I see how a wet stone would be a lot better.

I don't remember them being popular back in the 60s when I started shaving.

In that case don't forget that you will need to do a lot of learning. Your shopping list will necessarily include something to flatten your hones. One thing that is less than obvious is to learn is how to calibrate your HHT.

Welcome to the learning curves.

Jonathan

I've been watching all the videos I could. I'm pretty handy and have been sharpening things for years, have a whole bunch of stones, and I have also lapped stones before (I would probably buy at least a DMT 325 and probably a 120 as well for lapping the water stones), so I don't see that I'll have a big issue.

Where I do have an issue is with figuring out some of the acronyms used on the forum (ATG, XTG, WTG took me a while to figure out), and now HHT.

Originally Posted by Datsots

One thing that is less than obvious is to learn is how to calibrate your HHT.

Jonathan

Here you go:

Acronyms and Abbreviations - Straight Razor Place Wiki

Originally Posted by zib

Don't even worry about "HHT". It'll just complicate things more.

+1... Yeah it's nice when you can get a good HHT, but I've gotten plenty of DFS's (damn fine shaves) from razors that only marginally passed the HHT..

I mentioned calibrating a Hanging Hair Test (HHT) because my uncalibrated HHT confused me, until I caught a passing reference to calibrating a HHT. Like any test interpreting the results requires more skill than is obvious. I have stopped using the HHT except to amuse myself, as my results are inconsistent compared to the shave test.

Edit: Sorry for the confusion. I left off the links to the various helpful pages for two reasons. 1. It is hard to know what someone needs pointed out to them. 2. To encourage you to learn to search out the meaning of the references you do not recognize.

Jonathan

The listing states they are 8" x 3" which is in the normal range for synthetic hones. If you are planning to get yourself a dmt soon you don't need the lapping stone. Depending on the grit of your Norton oil hone it could fill in for a 1k, but not likely. You can also use a 4k to do bevel sets but it takes a while. Gssixgun has a video doing just that on youtube.

Jonathan