first time honing, not bad

Last night I took advantage of an empty house to have my first honing session. I used a cheapo razor I picked up on eBay a few weeks ago, specifically to practise honing. It had a few small chips, so it took a while to get rid of those and then set the bevel on a King 1k. Then I went to a Naniwa 3/8k, linen, and leather. I tried to go slowly, checking out each step under the microscope. When I shaved there was a bit of tugging, however, so I didn't do a third pass for fear of irritation.

Definitely not a great honing job, but I didn't expect it to be, but it wasn't bad at all. Overall, I'm happy with how it went, and I learned a lot in the process.

To cut costs I had used a piece of glass and some 600 grit wet dry sandpaper for lapping, but I have to say it was not ideal. It was ok for the 1k, but the piece of glass was too small to comfortably lap the Naniwa combo stone - it was pretty annoying, to be honest. I understand I can use my 1k to lap my 3k, would anyone care to verify this? Any other suggestions for lapping the 8k side of my combo stone?

Thanks!



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You CAN use one hone to lap the other, but it is not ideal. You have to ensure that the lapping hone is flat, and the King 1k, being soft, will not stay flat for long.

“I understand I can use my 1k to lap my 3k, would anyone care to verify this? Any other suggestions for lapping the 8k side of my combo stone?”

Not practically, first you have to get the stone flat and 1k will take a long time, is difficult to do and not do as good job as Wet and Dry or Diamond plate. Also make sure the edges are rounded or beveled.

Use 220 or 320 wet and dry and a steel cookie sheet from the dollar store, or better yet a 1k/400 grit Diamond plate from Chef Knives to Go, $35.

The diamond plate can be used to lap and refresh your stones each time you use them.

More than likely the bevel was not fully set. When you remove chip and reshape an edge, it is not regular honing and often will create a weak edge that will have to be removed and re set a few times.

Better close up photos of the razor may help advise you. With the stones you have now, a diamond plate and a stick of good Chrome Oxide you should be good to create fine comfortable edges.

Congratulations, you've taken a giant step into a door that will enhance your life from here on.

I think using hone A to lap hone B is more of a thing with natural stones. For example if you have 2 coticules that are flat already, rubbing one against the other every now and again could keep them reasonably flat (and make some slurry for your next honing session).

But with soft synthetics this is hit & miss. If one is softer than the other, it will abrade faster and probably not help so much keeping the harder stone flat.

This is why we typically use diamond plates, Sic grit on glass, or even sand paper on granite. All of the above are harder than most any stone you'll encounter (Arkansas stones being the exception) , and will flatten your stone - not dish the flattening surface.

Thanks guys! I'll try lapping with different grits of sandpaper, but I may end up investing in a DMT lapping plate eventually. Since I don't plan on going pro with this stuff, it would probably last me a lifetime.

I looked at the Chefs to go site (and many other similar sites), unfortunately shipping that specific diamond plate Euclid440 mentioned to Canada (or anything similar from the US) would double the price, and I can't seem to find any of the cheaper lapping plates in Canada. Therefore I may as well order a more expensive plate here since it would end up costing basically the same as buying a cheap plate in the US.

Any Canadians have any suggestions for lapping plates that would be significantly cheaper (but still good quality) than this one? https://classicedge.ca/index.php?rou...product_id=407

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Originally Posted by Marshal

I think using hone A to lap hone B is more of a thing with natural stones. For example if you have 2 coticules that are flat already, rubbing one against the other every now and again could keep them reasonably flay (and make some slurry for your next honing session).

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And to make it more complicated, the only way this actually works is if you do a sequence with three, not two, hones.

I guess that makes sense...more surfaces would probably make for a flatter end result, where two hones alone would eventually wear to one another in some odd way.

Unrelated, I find it intriguing that when I don't want it to correct something, the auto correct on my phone jumps right to 'the rescue.' But when I need it to make a change, it leaves me hanging only to find out hours later that I need to double back and fix a post I made. Like the one above. There's a special place in Hell for the person(s) that programmed that function...