Honing epiphany!

I've been honing now every day for 7 months - I've got my Shaptons down to a science. I have had a couple razors that I haven't been able to get to my ultimate level of perfection.

There is little mention here of torquing the blade down as you do your strokes and I tried this today with amazing results. I was able to get two of my "difficult" razors to tree top my arm hair which is my ultimate test. I have very fine arm hair and if I can tree top it, the razor is as sharp as it will ever get.

Just wanted to pass along the fact that torquing the razor down on its edge a bit is a great technique worth stressing to folks just starting out. Obviously you don't want to roll the blade onto its edge but a slight rotational force forward on the edge gives much more feedback and also seems to reduce the number of strokes needed on each hone in the progression.

Happy honing - if you haven't tried it yet give it a whirl...

-john

My two cents, if you are applying torque there is something up with the geometry and your bevel. You should not need to torque it, at least that is how I feel.

Glen mentioned it I one of his posts so I tried it and it worked. I'm not talking about scraping the blade down the hone just a bit of a shift in the weighting from spine to edge. I have about thirty razors that I maintain so I think I know how to set a bevel properly at this point. And the razors I tried it on we're pretty straightforward geometries - straight edges and no spine wear.

-John

Cool man, I am glad you are having good results though. Honing can be frustrating sometimes.

That WB 8/8 must be honed down to about an 1/8 by now :<0) Every razor has it's own attitude on my hones. Some just want to dance above the water and other want to dig in and grind. But yes torque is a factor I consider for each razor. How much and when.