Thread: The definitive Barber's Hone grit answer..

Originally Posted by souschefdude

Which hones are those? Cause these 2 I would not call aggressive. .

Brian

If you want an aggressive barber hone, try a Frictionite OO.

Well the aggressive comment I base off of two things. Firstly that all of the instructions (that I have seen) call out for 12 or less laps to bring back the edge, and most of the information I have seen on comparisons seem to follow that trend.

This is also based on my admitted limited experience with the honing aspect of this hobby.

Originally Posted by souschefdude

Pushing down on the razor, IMO, flexes the blade and results in honing the shoulder of the bevel, especially on the hollow grounds, not so much on wedges.
Ed, not sure what they would have done. I know back in the day every town would have a dude who would sharpen your knives, not sure about the razors.

Yeah we still have knife sharpeners too. Perhaps the knife guy did them on a fairly course stone or something hence the wear.

Originally Posted by 10Pups

I have a (you guessed it) NOS DD barbers hone that I swore I would never use. ( Your twisting my arm here) It has 2 sides and the finishing side feels a lot softer than my 12k Nani. More like some fine naturals Wolf has given me the opportunity to hold. Any barbers hone must have done the trick because that's all they had :<0) .

I have the DD dry razor hone. Lapped when I got it although it was like new due to slight dish in middle meaning only the edges were being used. Found it to work slow but used it after an 8k and both sides improved the edge.

Originally Posted by edhewitt

As an aside, before all the synthetics were easily available, what did people do once the barbers hone stopped being effective, if they left it too long before maintaining it? i realise that naturals would have been around, but I am sure folks didnt have the cash for a pipe of hones.
And what about lapping in the old days too?
This is a genuine question, I am not just following you round being argumentative today

Logical. The local barber sharpened razors

Originally Posted by eddy79

I have the DD dry razor hone. Lapped when I got it although it was like new due to slight dish in middle meaning only the edges were being used. Found it to work slow but used it after an 8k and both sides improved the edge.



Logical. The local barber sharpened razors

Ok smartarse what did the local barber use

Not to go too far off topic but we have a leech guy that comes around once a month. I don't think he touched razors as there were cross contamination issues even then. And, just to get this off my chest....something about those white coats the barbers wore made me feel very uneasy.

WTH is a leech guy?

Originally Posted by edhewitt

Ok smartarse what did the local barber use

The barber I know is 67 and learnt of his dad. His dad honed using a coticule or as he referred to it a soap stone(still in use). Also has a paddle with old school pastes that was his dads. I know he has a few other stones but not sure what they are. Seems they used a number of naturals or carbundum stones.

Thinking on it they may have used a cutler as well.

Souschefdude, we're you using lather, water, or air (no lubes) on the Hones? For information purposes only.

The 1500 strokes were without any liquid. (Though Technically air is a liquid)