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Thread: Newbie honer to newbie honers :)

  1. #1
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    Default Newbie honer to newbie honers :)

    So, I have honed two razors now to shave ready and shaved very successfully with both. One I needed some advice from the kind and helpful people here on SRP to know what to do with it, the other was straight forward. Both are vintage blades.

    I thought it might be useful for me to share my experience with other newbies thinking of honing their razors, there is a whole host of great information on this site but sometimes when you know so much about a subject it’s easy to forget what it’s like when you first start.

    A bit about me: I have been making things sharp from a very early age. Been a joiners son (the old timer type joiner that started his appentership at 15) I was first introduced to the oil stone to make chisels and plane blades sharp. After a few lessons I was told by my dad that “you have a knack for this” but I’m not sure if that was because he didn’t really like sharpening his tools and been a young lad having your dad say your good at something just makes you want to do it more. So for years I sharpened all his tools up to when he retired. Since then I found a love for, initially folding pocket knives and later kitchen knives.

    Over the years I have tried a variety of sharpening stones, mostly synthetic stones but I have tried and own a few natural stones that in all honesty I have never given the time to master. These days I do the vast majority of my sharpening on Naniwa super and chisora stones. Prior to owning a razor my stone set only went up to 8k but I have since added a 12k naniwa for razor use.

    That brings us up to date. Now I must admit that having a long sharpening history made me a little over confident in my ability to hone a razor (I suspect that if you come from a knife sharpening back ground you will be guilty of this also), when I read things like “razor honing is a whole new ball game” I thought to myself “yeh right it can’t that much different to a knife, what’s the big deal”. I was wrong ! Now I’m not saying honing a razor is more difficult than sharpening a knife well BUT IT IS very different and requires a completely new approach to sharpening compared to a knife.

    So in my admittedly limited experience in honing, as a newbie here are the things I have learnt. I hope you might find it useful when you are starting your journey in honing your own blades.


    1.)
    Buy / have a shave ready razor done by an experienced hone master. I can’t stress how important this is. Your perception / expectation of what sharp is and what a shave ready razor edge feels like is not likely to reflect the reality. You truly do need a reference point to know what you are aiming for. Had I not had that reference I am 100% sure I would now be shaving with a blade that while sharp and would be able to shave to a point it would not be shave sharp in the true sense and would more than likely be uncomfortable. The consequence of this is that you would / will have an inaccurate straight razor experience and more than likely give it up as a bad job before you even get going. You REALLY REALLY DO NEED that pro honed edge to start with.



    2.) Get the right tools for the job. You simply will not be able to get the edge you are looking for with bad equipment. It is a bit of a funny situation but you are likely(and IMO need) to spend more money on honing equipment than you are your razor. I stuck with my Naniwas because I know the stones, I know what they do and how they feel. Like I said I do have some natural stones kicking about but I never took the time to learn how to use them properly. I would like to try them to hone a razor in the future but for the time been I will be sticking with the Naniwas, there is enough new things to learn without adding stones into the equation. My advice is stick with what you know and I will be using them until I become comfortable with razor honing. If you don’t own any stones at all and are new to everything I would recommend sticking to synthetic hones (My personal favorite are the Naniwa Superstones and they also appear to be highly regarded in the razor world which was a bonus for me), you know what you are getting and are consistent. By all means go for natural stones but I think you are just adding more complexity that really isn’t necessary but whatever you decide buy good stones NOT cheap eBay stones which are more than likely just junk.


    3.) Time, you will need lots of it. By far the biggest difference I have found up to now is the time it takes to properly hone a razor. With a knife I can set a bevel and polish it up to 8k in about 40mins (if all the micro scratches are not removed it’s no big deal on a knife and you probably won’t even know they are there, on a razors edge YOU WILL) ……..i haven’t even been able set a razor bevel in that time. Give yourself plenty of time and don’t rush it, each stage requires allot of time to make sure you have removed all those scratches from the previous hone. I think this is mainly due to the pressure (or lack of) required to hone a razor which brings me to:


    4.) Pressure. It seems like everything in straight razor use has a great deal to do with the pressure used and honing it seems is no different. With a knife you can press down pretty hard on the stones and it won’t brake you edge, a razor is very different. A razors edge deforms very easily and using your normal knife honing pressure on a razor WILL destroy the edge !


    5.) Know what you are looking at. I wish I had took the time to read about razor blade geometry before I started, it would have made things much easier when reading about honing a razor as you know what parts are been referred to. Sounds obvious but I didn’t, don’t make the same mistake


    It isn’t much because I have not done much razor honing yet but this post was not intended to be a honing guide (there is much better information on this site by much more knowledgeable razor honers than me) but just a few pointers for newbies like myself when starting out. Hope it helps someone

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  3. #2
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    Although I already have some history using straight razors and trying to hone them, I still consider myself a newbie. I mostly agree to the points you mentioned and find I have had very similar experiences. Here are my observations in reference to your points:


    1. An utmost important point. I have ordered several razors from SRD and couple through Ebay, all marketed shave-ready. They have all passed HHT but many actually failed the shave-test simply because my shaving routine was still work-in-process at the time I tested them And that has lead to the fact that most of my shave-ready razors that used to work as a reference point are not sharp anymore... I, however, have couple of razors that I only have used once or twice so they still serve as some kind of reference for shave-readiness, I guess.


    2.
    The selection of hones has always been a difficult subject for me. I started already around 2005 when Norton 4/8k was in. So I ordered one but never got anywhere, not even when trying to refresh my once shave-ready razors.

    To make it worse, I started practising with an apparently useless fake-Solingen razor that I haven't been able to get sharp to this day (it simply doesn't get sharp, I get it now!). So forget all those "Sweeney Todd" razors you see in Ebay and really get a good razor to begin with, preferably a shave-ready one so you can begin by refreshing the razor first and continue to bevel setting as you feel confident with the hones.

    I finally, after many years and in frustration, ended up ordering some Dovo pastes and applied them to balsa wood. Couple dozen laps to my razors in need of refreshing, and voila!, I get HHT3-4, and smooth shaves again.

    Since then I have ordered couple of new razors, namely Dovo Best Quality and Wapienica, both of which absolutely did not come shave-ready. I decided to save my money and order some 3M lapping films: https://www.cousinsuk.com/catalog/co...e-lapping-film. I followed the tutorials found in SRP and around the internet and got surprisingly good results. I still might be doing something wrong, since interestingly, the razors never pass HHT off the lapping films, not even HHT1-2. Only after I strop the razors in balsa, in order Dovo green, red, black, do I start getting something like HHT3 (plus-minus 1). Usually Dovo green already does the trick but I go all the way and in the end I strop 50-100 laps with leather. Smooth shaves, and actually the Wapienica seems to be even smoother than the razors I received shave-ready from other honers, but I could be just imagining it.

    In the near future I would like to get Naniwa super stones with a DMT, or some similar combination, to really get into honing. The price tag is keeping me from doing so, and I have to admit that the lapping films have given satisfactory results this far.


    3.
    For me the whole procedure takes a lot of time and will probably continue to do so for quite some time. I usually do it when alone, in weekend or in holiday. It seems to take couple of hours in total, actually, weird since it's not THAT time consuming. And yes, my razors don't need honing that often but I use some of them for training purposes and hone them more often.


    4.
    Pressure. Tell me about it. I have noticed how I use less and less pressure when shaving and honing, and I gradually get better and better results. There must be some correlation here!


    5.
    I learned the razor terms in the beginning and never had special problems. Except in the beginning I ended up honing the shoulder of the blade since that was the one term I didn't quite catch
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  5. #3
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    One item I might add, which you will no doubt see repeated elsewhere...

    You need to put the time in to learn how hone. Honing skills won't come without a sizable investment of time sitting in front of the stone(s). But take small bites. It's easy to get caught up in marathon honing sessions, but IMHO you lose your concentration and touch when honing sessions turn into marathons.

    If a blade is giving you trouble, step away from it rather than trying to beat it into submission.
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    My experience mirrors Mike1011 almost exactly except my dad wasn't a joiner and I came to straights with a good set of JNats. Knife honing I think is a liability - my biggest mistakes were too much (knife-like) pressure and too little time working the slurry down, necessary for getting the pose butter-knife edges off JNats.

    it it took me about 3 months to get good smooth edges, and nine to do it (almost) every time.

    Good post Mike, thanks for posting.

    Cheers, Steve
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    Revelations and setbacks, revelations and setbacks. Confidence builds, then pops like a balloon. This is the cycle in the initial stages. Later the balloon pops more infrequently but it still pops.
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    Aristocratic treasure hunter Aggelos's Avatar
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    Yup indeed.

    Time, patience, and healthy amount of failure are needed at first.

    I'd strongly advise to go progressively in terms of difficulty.

    Try to focus on straight blades before you try to hone smiles, and if possible try with something that doesn't need to be reset from scratch.

    Thanks for the post
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    Beautiful is important, but when all is said and done, you will always be faithful to a good shaver while a bad one may detter you from ever trying again. Judge with your skin, not your eyes.

  9. #7
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    Possibly a greater problem is failing to recognize a failure as a failure. A lot of learning can come from failing. Conversely, a success or two does not elevate you to a pro honer. A few years ago there was a spate of beginner honers who transitioned from raw beginners to seasoned pros with years and thousands of razors experience in just six months!
    Last edited by Utopian; 05-20-2014 at 10:25 PM.
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  10. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aggelos View Post

    Try to focus on straight blades before you try to hone smiles, and if possible try with something that doesn't need to be reset from scratch.
    Unfortunately all the blades I bought off the bay need a bit of work doing to them. Here is the blade I needed advice with http://straightrazorpalace.com/honin...de-please.html I didn't notice at the time but it also had a bit of "hook heal", which was pointed out but had to do more reading to find out what it meant and had to sort that out after I had set the bevel. Without advice I would not have been able to get it into a working state.

    Incidentley that blade started life like this http://straightrazorpalace.com/custo...storation.html it has been my first restore and certainly won't be my last. I have really enjoyed doing it and the best part is you get to have a nice shave when its all done

    I'm under no illusion that I have allot to learn but this forum has been extremely useful and filled with great info aswel as some great, helpful and friendly people.....I tip my hat to you all and say thanx

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