Thread: Hone of the Day

Originally Posted by celticcrusader

Glen, I've seen a few like that over the years, made me scratch my head and say well how did you manage without that heel all this time.

Agreed - I've been surprised at the number of razors I've received that had the heel basically left untouched.

All my Heljestrand's Mk's had to have the heel touched up and countless others. For me, I like the entire real estate of the blade usable.....

James Barlow& Sons on the Fiddich River Stone. Forgot to put this up here yesterday what a nice shave.

Now I know that my edges are on point, I will try finishing on different Coticules, I have one hard vintage one that gives amazing edges; a few modern bought Coticules do not give a great finish.

I gotta figure out which Coticules I like and which I don't, gonna put two shave ready razors coming off an Escher on Coticules for finishing and determine which stones I'll be using for finishing and the others go in a progression to be used with slurry use.

I suspect a fully developed and perfected Escher finish will be hard if not impossible to beat.

I've gotten to a point where I perfected my Escher edges where I find them personally better shaving compared to a J-nat finish on a razor I recently purchased. (Which is my VERY limited experience shavin with jnat edges) But that's mostly a personal preference thing.

On the hones today a NOS Filarmonica Medallon Taurino 14, on it's way to Switzerland to a guy I do a lot of work for, who just so happens to have possibly one of the best collections of Filarominca 14 Palmera 14 and Ibera 14 I've ever seen.

Glen i knew you could do it.. LOL !!!!

This is the third razor I have honed up on this stone and shaved. The results have been very consistent and phenomenally close and skin friendly. Glad I accidentally purchased this one.

Originally Posted by celticcrusader

On the hones today a NOS Filarmonica Medallon Taurino 14, on it's way to Switzerland to a guy I do a lot of work for, who just so happens to have possibly one of the best collections of Filarominca 14 Palmera 14 and Ibera 14 I've ever seen.

That one must have been hard to give back mate!

Originally Posted by Phrank

Agreed - I've been surprised at the number of razors I've received that had the heel basically left untouched.

All my Heljestrand's Mk's had to have the heel touched up and countless others. For me, I like the entire real estate of the blade usable.....

Agreed, same here.

After checking for the bevel I have noticed that many heels don't even have a proper bevel set or are very coarse still.


I never have troubles honing razors, except for one part, the heel itself usually gives me trouble. The very outer parts are the last for me to get to shaving.

I would love to hear how others manage troublesome heels that give difficulty setting a good bevel on.

I think the spine influences the honing on the heel, as well as the shape of the heel itself and the spine to edge relation width and angle all make it sometimes very difficult

Usually it's not as simple as I thought it would be getting the heel in a perfect shaving condition.

The edge refining on those 'hard to reach' heels have also proven to be difficult or at least take a lot longer then anticipated.

I usually use a narrow hone and do heel leading strokes, razor parallel strokes and point leading strokes. I try to use all different angles, but I wonder if anyone has a surefire method to attack these heels?

I know plenty of razors I've had to put aside because of this issue

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Took 3 razors that were honed and finished on an Escher and now I wanted to see how they do on two different Coticules.
Of these 2 Coticules I was fairly certain with past experiences that they could deliver great edges, but didn't fully max them out yet.

Took 2 of the razors and put one on a vintage Coticule, unknown vein, has a woodsy pattern in it
the other I put on a La Grise, similar looking to the other

The third razor was left untouched.

The first one (vintage Henckels) honed on the vintage Coticule was very good, sharp and smooth. 1 pass ATG without a problem, no tugging, very sharp and very skin friendly.
Definitely more my preference.


The one hones on the La Grise was the heaviest grind of the 3 razor and previously my least favorite shaver, now with the Coticule finish it felt so much smoother and more skin friendly, ergo I loved the shave, plows through everything but felt so easy on the skin. I dig I dig.
This one became my favorite one. Very smooth, skin friendly and first pass ATG from the bottom to the top of my neck without even feeling the thing.


The third left with the Escher finish, also very good. Albeit I still feel there's room for improvement, however it's a Grelot and seems to have hard steel, I feel I can get more refinement on this edge, that hard steel is a tough nut to crack, but I'll get there. (Kinda makes sense why I find more pastes on French auction sites than others, probably helped with their hard steel)

Anyway, not sure why I got these good results, whereas I really preferred the Escher finish 10 out of 10 times before.

2 factors probably coming into play:

1. I honed and finished on an Escher before going to a Coticule
2. I finished purely under running water with the Coticules. No other strokes were done but these.

All were stropped the same. Excellent results, I didn't expect this due to previous experiences, but am happy.
It also helps they were vintage Solingen blades, good quality, great shavers.

Originally Posted by celticcrusader

On the hones today a NOS Filarmonica Medallon Taurino 14, on it's way to Switzerland to a guy I do a lot of work for, who just so happens to have possibly one of the best collections of Filarominca 14 Palmera 14 and Ibera 14 I've ever seen.

Beautiful - if it's who I think it is, who posts frequently elsewhere, I've seen some of his razors, spectacular, especially the Iberia's...can't recall seeing him post the Palmera's, which I'm sure he has, or I did see them and just blacked it out....the Iberia's I saw were amazing.

Is he the poster who also has those extremely rare Galatea 14's? Another beautiful blade....

It's been a minute since I posted here, mainly because I haven't honed in months, until this weekend. Nothing special here, just touching up a few regulars from my stable. All these just got some tweaking on the Naniwa 12k, followed by a progression on that surgical black arkansas, and then that trans ark in the back. This combo seems to give me the smoothest edges I have ever had! In fact, I just shaved with that Frederick Reynolds, and it once again proved why it's one of my favorites!

I also had to reset the bevel on my neighbor's Portland Razor; somehow he had gotten it butter-knife dull using that same Nani 12 and Surgical Black (to be fair, he's in charge of the cardiac cath lab at our regional heart center, and probably hasn't really had time to learn). At any rate, I was amazed at how quickly the O1 Tool Steel on that PRC took a perfect straight bevel on the Chosera, then my usual progression up through Norton 4/8k, the finishers mentioned above, and some judicious stropping. I already gave it back to him, so no pics, but now I definitely want a PRC!