Quote Originally Posted by bobski View Post
Hey guys,

This thread was started as to let people who don't know the intricacies of natural japanese stones which from all accounts are outstanding. I didn't intend to create any sort of competition between all these varying jnats, and some other equivalent synthetics. I think we need to seperate the average home honer, who owns a dozen or so razors, likes to sharpen/hone their own razors, with their own stones, not to hone a stone with an eastern Siberian stone made from a volcanic eruption four billion years ago....lol Us who like to hone a little, like the lovely Sueihiro 20k. We may never in years need to fully take any dishing out. So my view is relatively simple. I love my razors and hones, strops and the lot, but I don't hone for others for money or anything, I've only done my own, and I proud of my razors results, the shave is superb and my hones are in tip top condition too. So sure some stone worth thousands of dollars carved out of the left face of Mt Everest will hone well. With my feet firmly placed on the ground, I've spent enough on good synthetic stones including the Gokumyo 20k, and I'm thrilled with the results I get. I am not critisising those who follow that route I simply offer a different idea. Just as an example I got a $70 razor from Ron Spencer yesterday a Engels. It shaved well after a few leather stops. Different strokes for different blokes./

Regards bobski
I had two koppa that were $70 that did a great job honing a razor, and a vintage japanese barber hone that was $165. If you were a professional, then honing with a gok makes maybe even more sense than an amateur, because you don't want to be puzzling over why an edge isn't as good as you want on a natural stone when you've got a stack of ten more razors to do and somewhere to go in a couple of hours.

The one thing that's a little nutty about folks who just get into honing is the assumption that it's something you do regularly. As a shaver and not a razor refinisher, it's something you do very very infrequently, and very little of it in those infrequent times. If you have a good linen (non abrasive), that may mean every six months if you use one razor, and you'll give up nothing in sharpness along the way.

The real advantage of the gok isn't that it saves you money over any other stone, it's that it's easy to use.