So, I've been honing razors for basically as long as I've been shaving with them, which is around 7 years now. I also do it as a side business in my area as it is a nice way to increase my cash flow. I also work in a knife shop which does knife sharpening, but I never thought of the stuff we have here as any good for proper razor honing.

Anyway, a razor customer came in to drop off a razor for me to do this week while at home (I keep the razor honing separate from the knife store). It had a bit of a nick in the edge, so I taped the spine, grabbed a very worn and old fine diamond stone (thinking that I was going to redo the bevel on a 1000x water stone when I got home anyway) to get rid of the nick.

I do so and figure I should start undoing the coarseness of the diamond and grab a fine ceramic rod from the Spyderco Sharpmaker that we sometimes use for knife touch ups as a preliminary to doing the real work. I spent less than 5 minutes on it and tested it on some arm hair. It wasn't bad, so I spent maybe another 5 minutes on it. I then stropped it on leather with CrOx and then a piece of cardboard as the final stage. I was amazed to discover that it crop dusted arm hair easily and passed HHT quite well also.

This goes against all of my expectations and experience for what should work for honing a razor. I haven't shaved with it, but I'll strop it when I get home and try it out to make sure it actually shaves okay before giving it back to the customer. I don't feel like this should have worked, but it seems to have worked quite well. What do you guys think?

Edit: I should add that I have been a member on here previously under a different name when I was younger. I know that this would be an odd first post for a true newbie.