Thread: Honing a Gold Dollar is hard!

Originally Posted by almond

the fact these days is:-

**newsflash**

most gold dollars/gold monkey/zy's these days do not require extensive honing to get a great shave. They are already sharpened to 4k or 6k already. They are sharp enough as is & they just need a finishing touchup. So my current thinking is most of them merely require gentle honing on a 10k stone and then finishing up by stropping on a newspaper 200 laps each side.

My fault when I started honing was using a carborundum sharpening stone (an oil stone with 2 sides, one smooth and one rough) but doesn't have the grit mentioned. I suspect the rough side is 220 and the smooth side is 1000. But that is just my suspiscion, can't say for sure. This is the one here:



It created a lot of slurry when used with oil, maybe I scraped away the razor edge creating a totally new bevel. It was painful, but I created a new bevel without any reason. Yes, it's a stupid thing to do.

Entry level shave ready is 8K. Which is why they need touching up, and needing a touch up is NOT 'shave ready.' And if you cut a completely new bevel on that hardware store hone, that's a good indicator that it wasn't honed at the proper angle, and needed a complete hone from bevel set on up - not just a 10k touch up.

If all you did was take a Naniwa 10k to that razor, you would be there for hours - if not days - trying to get the razor to contact the hone from the shoulder to the edge of the bevel. Some of these people have been honing for a long time, and many have honed more Gold Dollars than you have messed up. You would do well to listen when they speak - I guarantee you they are not wrong in their assessment of these razors.