Thread: Practical Honing from a Non-Restorer's Persepctive

There may have been a discussion about this before, but I don't really see one.

When I first started shaving about 5 years ago (or at least shaving with a straight razor), I came from a woodworking background with a fascination for sharp tools. I already had a chinese hone, arks, shaptons through a 15k pro, diamond compounds, japanese natural stones, etc. It took me a couple of go arounds until I came up with an edge I considered comfortable, and I also don't want to discount how important it is to gain experience as a shaver, because you learn to shave in a way that doesn't just involve raking only the very sharpest iron oxide edge straight up and down your face to get a close shave.

Anyway, I had gotten the edge of the razor the way I wanted it using chromium oxide on balsa (the graded powder, too, nothing including other abrasives). At the time, I had a couple of inexpensive but nice looking cowhide strops that ultimately didn't do me any favors after the chromium oxide, so I was shaving and honing once a week or once every two weeks to get a smooth shave.

That irritated me, because I figured that I may only get a few years out of a razor doing that, and I managed to find a dennert razor with spine work that I really liked.

So like a lot of us, I bought all kinds of razors and restored a bunch of them, got specific japanese natural stones, a big escher, coticules and continued to use the razors honing fairly often.

It still irritated me that I was honing that often, because i know in the old days, there were folks who would shave less often and who would get their razors honed by a barber. I had relatives who grew up in that era, and I know most folks from those times would not hurry to pay someone to hone a razor for them.

So, in the search for a better strop to stretch out the time between honing, I got a horse butt strip that had a nice clear run (it's still my daily strop), and broke it in. That helped. I could probably go 3 weeks instead of 1-2, and I didn't have the issue of the strop knocking the keenness of the chromium oxide off of the razor.

And then, by chance, I was looking for a horse butt production strop and chanced across an old illinois 326 new in the package with a fresh white unused silk finish linen. The texture of the linen was such that it took me a while to be brave enough to use it (it feels like cobblestone and it's stiff), but once I did and once I realized it left a layer of wax on a razor edge that could be wiped off, I think I found the missing link between honing a razor and using it for a while on the cheap. I now hone about once every 4 months, and usually because curiosity gets the best of me. One time per week on the silk finish linen (which, importantly, removes very little material such that at the end of 4 months, 5 minutes on a fine frictionite hone, on a japanese natural finisher or on any other finisher is all it takes me to get a razor back to totally fresh - never even anything as aggressive as a shapton finisher).

The longest I've gone is 6 months, and even that was terminated because someone wanted me to test a hone for them (unfortunately, their hone dulled my razor from the state that it was in).

I still love the stones, but I don't really use them much, and on the razor I use as daily shaver for the last year and a half (a dovo bismarck), I only use the finest of the stones.

The other thing that appeals to me is that my bismarck is far from straight. Compared to the dennert, it's a banana, and at this point, I had switched to it only because I wanted to save the dennert until I had a system down that didn't have me honing it once every couple of weeks. I've restored probably 40 razors, and sold most of them and at the point where I've lost interest in restoring any more of them. honing a banana only on the finest stone is a pain in the rear end, and the bismarck is not a razor I would've tolerated honing once every two weeks. But even though it's got some english, it's straight enough that the stiff linen still touches all of it.

So, from a practical shaver's perspective, a good vintage style linen that has some very gentle abrasive suspended in it (presumably talc or something in the silk finish, something softer than the steel itself), and I have not yet had a razor that was already sharp that couldn't be stepped back to sharpness with it, not even after 6 months.

In the sea of honing and rehoning and rehoning, I thought I'd throw that out there. I've sort of disappeared from the honing discussions on here because of it. My razor's somewhere in the 3 months since honing range right now, and the silk finish is still keeping it up, and after 2 years of use every week, the linen still barely has any hint of gray on it - a miniscule amount of metal removal that is confirmed each time by the fact that even my finest finisher will work all the way to the edge in minutes.

I think as I bring all of this up, i've reminded myself to get the dennert back out - I have no reason to spare it any longer, it'll last a lifetime plus some with this regimen.

I have read about the vintage silk linen and have been very curious about it.
From the articles I have seen it was the crème de la crème.
I thank you for your thoughts on it and now I would like to try it even more.

A great read. Only just starting to use linen, pretty much for the same reason, because it seemed too coarse, but it works well.It would be interesting to know the most shaves anyone here has had using just linen and leather, or even just leather, between having to re-hone.

Interesting,My Engells Horse butt has that very same componant but I have never used it because it is rough and waxy,scares me.
How many strokes are you doing on it and how often,may Give it a shot.

You know I read threads like this and it always seems that you guys miss the most important part of the equation and give the credit to some Product/Stone/Strop, it seems that the most important aspect to stretching out the time between honing is "Your growing experience"

All those razors restored, honed, stropped, and shaved, is the real solution...

JMHO you discount the experience and glorify the item used...


Just a thought

Oh, definitely the experience is important. I sort of alluded to it in the comment not just the experience with honing, but with shaving with a razor that isn't iron oxide sharp (it's still very sharp). though the HHT is not the end all test, at 6 months, my razors are still easily severing a hair without splitting down its length. I can't vouch for any other hair than mine, but if my hairs don't stay at that level on a razor, it's generally not going to be much fun for me to shave.

The silk finish linen is sort of my link to the past in this - i was curious how someone in the past would've stretched their razor, because I've heard accounts from old shavers saying that they never used anything but a linen and a strop, and I know that as a culture, we often like to see people in prior centuries as a combination of antiquated, dumb and tough, but I doubt that was the case for many (of you look at old pictures, you find that in most cases, the folks were much more particular about their appearance, and an older craftsman I know likes to describe how his grandfather would literally not answer the door if he wasn't in a suit). The linen sort of provides the link of how to stretch a razor out between honing without actually having to shave with a dull razor. The linen itself will bring up a natural stone edge that isn't quite what you'd like it to be (which to me is a coti type edge, or generally 80% of the natural stones out there), but it won't solve issues like fixing someone who runs an older coarser aluminum oxide razor hone all the way to the edge - it doesn't have enough persuasion to fix that kind of thing.

Certainly experience honing counts, but I had a background of sharpening knives and tools by hand, and it took me about 5 honing sessions to get to the point where I had an edge that's as good as they have been now. In those 5, I went through the things most tool or knife to razor sharpeners probably go through, which is not just looking for a polish, but really finishing an edge and then doing something (like chromium oxide powder) to the finished edge to make it smooth, too.

I don't so much want to glorify the silk finish linen, other than to say that it does work, and it's significantly different than the process I had been relying on (though no more effective, just less messy and much more sparing). I do think some information has been lost since those linens were made, and I know there are also white vintage no-name linens out there that are brash, softer, etc. We don't even know if those silk finish linens were stiff when they were new - for all we know, they've gotten that way over time. That certainly is the case with norton india and especially norton crystolon stones - two types that generally shouldn't be used with razors, the former possibly for the absolute worst basket cases. Anyway, for tools and knives, a brand new crystolon stone is a fast cutting grit shedding monster, but when they are 50 years old, the vitrified matrix is so hard that they're useless.

I wouldn't use my commentary above to advocate that someone should just forgo restoring razors and gaining the training of the hand, especially if they are not accustomed to sharpening anything at all (that would be especially steep), but more as a commentary about one way to go about having the absolute glee of sharpening with a sharp razor every single day (i still have that glee in the morning) without honing away at the razor all the time. I my case, it's the silk finish linen. I'm sure others could concoct something that would also work without grinding away at the razor. The entire progression is interesting to me (i recognize i'm going all over the place in this response).

One other benefit, though, before I stop going on tangents - of using a good linen, is that the pain in the butt of a less than straight razor is really minimized. I can guarantee 100% that I was super disappointed with the bismarck when I got it, at the time I was maintaining either with chrome ox or with a vintage japanese very hard barber hone, and banana razors an hard stones don't really do anyone any favors. It's not mission impossible, but it's mission undesirable compared to a razor that is pin straight. The linen maintenance pretty much saved my attitude with the razor. (I still believe one of the most important things for a beginner to have is a razor that's a cutler knocked themselves out on and got dead straight - it's just so much easier to hone without working a banana razor on the edge of a stone, etc).

We have a whole bunch of strop makers who frequent these forums - I'd love for one of them to dig up some historical information and see if they can duplicate that kind of linen.

I brought all of this up also because when i first started, I thought "I wonder if I'll get tired of screwing around with the razor for 5 or 10 minutes every two weeks, because if I do, I'll stop shaving". the linen maintenance - and also importantly - the recognition that my purchased soft cowhide strops weren't up to par - puts that aside. If newbies are having the same kind of honing fatigue, they can know that down the road, they won't have to deal with it so much (and by then, they'll be good enough that they'll nail the honing first try every few months when they do have to do it).

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Interesting,My Engells Horse butt has that very same componant but I have never used it because it is rough and waxy,scares me.
How many strokes are you doing on it and how often,may Give it a shot.

It does give you a zzzzzzzzzzzippppp sound and a feeling like you're stropping on a hard piece of tent canvas, it's alarming. I do it once a week, medium pressure (make of that what you would, it's only important that the pressure is enough to make sure my banana bismark's bevel contacts the linen on both sides) - 30 strokes. I get the wax off of the edge with my shirt, light pressure trailing strokes until it comes off. Then strop on the horse butt (keeps the horse butt from getting any of the wax on it). I got tripped up at first leaving a little bit of the was on the spine and bevel of the razor, thinking the razor was dull when the issue was actually that the wax dragging on my skin.

I've always been of the mind that all the high end or top of the line products, though they can help can never take the place of skill. A highly competent straight user can keep his razor in top shave condition with shockingly little and someone who doesn't have a clue but owns everything imaginable can struggle to keep his razor at a minimal or less level. I agree a good piece of vintage linen is a wonderful thing. I have one myself but it ain't magic.

It's possible that they're not all the same. I wouldn't call it a high end item, it came on a horse butt strop (in an era when anything special was shell). Certainly not high end compared to things that we use now that cost hundreds of dollars.

And while it's not magic, it does stretch what was a 3 week honing interval to 6 months without any other assistance. Whatever is on the linen makes it much more useful than a plain linen, and makes for a maintenance routine that is effective and very sparing on a favorite razor, as evidenced by the lack of filings on the linen after a couple of years of use.

I found some patents that might suggest that there's no abrasive in it, and that say the same thing, that it's intended to work on a honed razor and not to be a sharpener itself.

Patent US1605179 - Razor strop and the preparation thereof - Google Patents

Patent US2456263 - Razorstrop composition - Google Patents

It appears that silk finish refers to the underlying type of canvas used, at least suggested by the second patent - a "silk finish canvas" is used.

The second patent suggests creosote is involved, so I guess nobody will be duplicating it.