I hate to seem impossibly contradictory here but there is no such thing as too sharp or over stropping :<0)


Quote Originally Posted by criswilson10 View Post
I'll defer to the others for the linen and final leather stropping numbers. I've been honing a long time, but shaving only a few months. Tomorrow I'm increasing my time on the linen (thanks Glen and no offense taken).

Those honing numbers are just a baseline average and they probably are skewed toward German steel. I go by feel, but I'm OCD enough that I have to write down the numbers for different metals with different hones to find the best solution. <sarcasm>Doesn't everyone have multiple notebooks of honing procedures??? <end sarcasm> ;-)

I consider over honing to be removing more metal than necessary to get it sharp. At some point you are not making it any sharper, you are just removing more metal. At 3k and above it is hard to do any serious over honing damage. At 12k and above I think your arms would tire out before you really did any damage. Below 1k it can happen pretty quickly.

I will add that it is possible to over sharpen a blade. I polished mine down to 0.001 micron and when laid flat on the skin of my arm it nicked me from just the weight of the blade. There was no way I was putting that on my face.