Thread: Buying Vintage Hones?

Ahhh

Either way makes no difference, tape or no tape to the necessity of resetting the bevel..

I can tell you from personal experience that a regular maintenance routine, will keep a razor shaving indefinitely..

Well that about clears it up then. I watched the video where you (Glen) and another guy, "speedster" i think, honed a razor. Well it was more like you teaching him and that was very helpful. I wish there were more videos like that. Because as you said in the video, when the masters do it, its hard to learn what mistakes your making and how to correct it.

I have always considered that vid with Mark and the new one on what is a shave test to be the best I have done...

Plus it is always great to sit down with people that you have a common interest with, Mark has been up to the place multiple times, in fact he is coming up tomorrow just to hang out

One of the best parts of SRP is the meetups that take place across the world whether the larger planned ones, or just the small get togethers between new friends..

Originally Posted by gssixgun

I can tell you from personal experience that a regular maintenance routine, will keep a razor shaving indefinitely..

For a newbie, what would you consider the 'best maintenance routine'? Stropping + CrOx on balsa? Stropping + 1 or .3 micron lapping film? Stropping + barber's hone? Or maybe a high-grit synthetic stone + stropping? TIA!

Originally Posted by gugi

Yes, I should've made it clear that for effective maintenance you need fabric component strop, not just leather. There are some old threads with experiments on the difference the fabric component makes.

I have tons of strops but have been using essentially one of them (plus a vintage kanayama shell for 10-20 laps at the end). The fabric component on it is cotton, that is treated with something waxy - that's the most common vintage strop as far as I can tell. This one started brand spanking new looking and over the first month started graying and now few years later is fairly black. That's the iron oxide from the razors I've stropped and it seems a good thing on a strop. I am not sure what is currently the dominant abrasive, the iron oxide or whatever treatment the strop started with, but if I'm to bet I'd say they're likely comparable.
I've also used plain vintage cotton, linen and few different treatments and they all work.

I think there's a fairly large difference between the old strops. I've seen some that are pretty much black with razor residue. I don't have a great picture of mine, but I snapped it with my camera last night, so it can be seen how dark it is. There are two things contributing to it not being dark - it's so hard that the tops of the linen that contact the razor are smoothed, but most of the surface is not touching any part of the razor, just those tips. And, of course, because the abrasive that is used is gentle and toned down even more by being suspended away from the edge in wax.

At any rate, I've gotten three linens now, haven't used the other two yet but was careful to pick this style with little metal on them because I'm stingy with the razors I'd like to have. What's surprising to me is how well this strop keeps an edge in shape and for how long despite the fact that there's very little metal left on the surface of it.

As I mentioned previously, this is probably about 50 uses worth of swarf, maybe somewhere in the range of 1500 pretty heavy strokes (because of the strop stiffness, the strokes have to be pretty forceful or most of the edge will never touch the linen).

Originally Posted by TimS

For a newbie, what would you consider the 'best maintenance routine'? Stropping + CrOx on balsa? Stropping + 1 or .3 micron lapping film? Stropping + barber's hone? Or maybe a high-grit synthetic stone + stropping? TIA!

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Assuming that most newbies start out with basically a 4k/8k stone, I think from personal experience that they should set a goal of getting a close, comfortable shave from their 8k stone. Also they should keep high grit finishers out of the equation until they become proficient at achieving that basic 8k shave at will.

Keep it simple until you fully grasp the honing concept.

Jerry
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Originally Posted by mrsell63

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Assuming that most newbies start out with basically a 4k/8k stone, I think from personal experience that they should set a goal of getting a close, comfortable shave from their 8k stone. Also they should keep high grit finishers out of the equation until they become proficient at achieving that basic 8k shave at will.

Keep it simple until you fully grasp the honing concept.

Jerry
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Sorry if I confused the issue, but I was asking about the best maintenance routine for an already honed, shave ready razor.

Originally Posted by cosperryan

So I'm looking at buying a hone and I really don't feel like spending 100+ dollars on a hone but I don't want to get a piece of crap. Do you think it would be wise to purchase a vintage hone from ebay. I know that I would most likely have to lap it several times and make sure that it is even and flat. Has any one ever bought an old vintage hone off ebay with any success and not just for aesthetic purposes.

I have gotton must of my nice rocks of the ebay. And i just love the whole haggling with people over price.
The best way to get a good deal if there's a stone you know is a nice finish item just offer something like 29 bucks they might counter with 39 and accept it. My vintage norton stone that's 6by2by1 i got by offering money for it in that fashion. and it's much finer then stuff that people pay more then that for. I use a coticule before that stone. But ya ya do sometimes get crap littery. Theirs this one stone i have on my shelf that i paid 7 bucks for it's pure crap in the middle it cuts more course then the rest of the stone. You want them to cut nice and uniform. be careful of clear arkanis glued to wood boxes they use to torch the bottoms so they can be glued to a box . seek them from the paper boxes.

And always remmber a nice clean surface area on the stone cuts alot better then a dirty stone.
So clean it with a plastic brush and some soap and warm water.