Thread: Linen if you're Honing with a Coarse Stone

I see a lot of posts lately about surprise comfortable shaves with stones on the more coarse side. I thought I'd start another topic that has less to do with the stone, and more to do with method.

I like to use a cheap (you can tell it's cheap by the pictures) scope from time to time to look at the edge of the razor and see if there's damage. Usually if there is any, you can actually see it with the naked eye as something other than an infinitesimally small line at the edge (that being the visual difference between a razor that's been honed and one that's been honed and then stropped. The strop always leaves a visible reflective tiny hint on the edge of a razor if your eyesight is good enough to see it).

At any rate, I have a washita that was being used by a barber. I was puzzled by that. So I cleaned it off and lapped it and then broke it in. What I found was this, as a method to get a good edge from a coarse stone no matter what:

* set bevel by geometry, same as you always would - I always try to even out the bevel on whatever I get, if anything's been used significantly, it always seems to have bias in it
* clean off said stone (I do all of this on one stone), especially if a slurry was lapped onto the surface because the bevel setting was significant. Then 50 laps (number not important but pressure level progression is) firm pressure down to almost no pressure. Firm should not be firm enough to flex the bevel.
* take the razor to a good linen and work it, strop it if you'd like after that and check HHT. It will probably pass, but not silently up and down the razor and from both sides. Shave with it if you want, but I don't at this point. It'll shave, but more laboriously than a smooth comfortable razor.
* Go back to the washita (in my case, fill in any mid stone you like to use), ten light laps on the washita (really light) and then linen again.
* Do the alternating step above one or two more times and then strop on leather.

For some reason, the back-and-forth between the stone and the linen cleans the edge up a *lot* more than just honing a bunch or just using the linen a whole bunch in a row, and seems to remove the damage. This weekend my Mrs. will be out of the house, and I'll have free reign to screw around in the shop, and i'll get some pictures of this to see just what's going on.

The only thing you need to be sure of is that your linen performs well enough to not scratch up or beat up an edge, because it's getting used a lot and it needs to establish the final edge it self by burnishing - no abrasives should be used on the linen, and if the linen is of the cotton felt type that is scratchy and abrasive, then this experiment should probably be avoided. I think what's happening with this, because the honing between linen uses is there, but minimal, is just what happens when you use a barber hone. You're establishing the edge with a linen and burnishing it and working it, but not just removing the torn up stuff, which is done on the first time with the linen. The hone is protecting the geometry and just doing a little clean up on anything that the linen tears free.

Try it. I like it with natural stones, because they respond better to linen and strop when stones are coarse, but maybe you'd find the same thing favorable with a synthetic.

You told me about this months ago Dave and I tried it then with my Washita stones with success and although it wasn't too difficult, it took alot more tweeking then if I just finished on my regular progression. With that said, it was a great learning experience and was fun too.

Definitely, it's not as easy as using a finish stone/progression, but I think it's what got me on to using a barber hone properly (and not removing an edge completely).

I think if a full set of stones is available, this is just playing around. I'll bet in the old days when there weren't forums, people found something that worked and just did it without wondering what other 25 things did!

On the woodworking forums, the few people who apprenticed officially talk about how their master taught them to sharpen a certain way, so they did it without question and never examined it further.




There is one case where I like this method pretty well - and that's when I come across a razor that's been honed a little too much, that has a fat grind, and a wide bevel. Sometimes the fat wide bevel gets polished and those razors can be deceiving once you get to a shave. Using only the washita to get toward a finished edge at least equates to the geometry being dead one before going to a final stone. Get to the later stones too fast and they'll never remove the shiny fat bevel enough to get the edge touching the stone. (tape is a good shortcut in that case, too, and a whole lot easier, I guess!!).

Guess that goes to show there's more than one way to skin a cat. Just gotta pick one that suits you and get the job done. I'll have to play with my linen, it's newer stuff from SRD but I don't think it scratches things up. Does leave an interesting burnish that's reminiscent of a kasumi edge when I'm done with the leather but I haven't really looked at the strop to see what it's doing. It it isn't abrasive and scratchy I might give this a shot with a soft Arkie or something similar. It's always interesting to play with something new and see what comes of it.

I doubt it'll go into my regularly rotated bag of tricks, but who knows? If nothing else the knowledge could come in handy later down the road.