Honing Technique...

[jlpenn85]

Hello all, new to the forum.

Just recently got into straight razor shaving and had a question about honing on sharpening stones. I have worked in the culinary field for several years earlier in my life and really got into knife sharpening. I got really good at it, so naturally those skills helped me out when sharpening my straight razor. The question I have though, is about the technique I see on videos online with straight razor sharpening. Every video I see the person sharpening the razor only uses one hand and holds the razor by the tang and makes their passes that way. This method bugs me because of the possibility of the razor not completely evenly contacting the surface of the stone. When I sharpen my kitchen knives I usually hold the knife in one hand and use the other hand to apply pressure to the blade with my finger tips. This way, I can evenly space out my finger tips and make sure the blade is having nice even contact with the stone.

Now, I know that with a straight razor, the edge is very thin, and so you can't really apply very much pressure at all, because you will bend/deform the edge while sharpening, thus affecting your results. So, what I've been doing is holding the razor in one hand, and using my other hand, very lightly applying a small amount of pressure to the blade. Just to make sure I'm getting good even contact.

What I want to know is, why do I never see anyone do this in videos online? They always use the one handed technique I previously mentioned. Is there something bad about the two handed technique that I use and I shouldn't do it anymore? Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.