Honing Woes

I have been honed and set the bevel of one of my straight razors wonderfully and after a WTG and ATG pass I have a baby smooth face. So I have attempted to hone my second razor using the same methods (1k, 4k, 8k, 12k stones with x stroke) and am struggling to get it comparably sharp. Looking under the loupe there seems to be more scratches on the bevel and it fails to give me that baby smooth skin after having shaved. What could cause such an inconsistency? For reference the one I am having trouble with a is Half Hollow 5/8 E.C Simmons Keen Kutter straight razor.

Cam

The bevel set is the foundation. All the magic happens on the 1K and 4K hones. I look almost straight down on the edge, not the side of the bevel to check that it is a perfectly formed apex from toe to heel. Any sparkles, lines or flat spots show there. You should be able to get a decent shave off the 1K. From there you are refining what is there and making if sharper and smoother. If the apex is not perfect it does not matter how pretty the sides of the bevel look.

Join the club. I too run across this from time to time. Guessing the bevel just isnt as good as you think it is. Ive even gone as far as to kill the edge a fter 8 think im there and go some more. Sometimes it just dont go as smoothly as other razors. Ive got two right now that ive spent hours on and still no go. Keep at it. Setting bevel i mean.

Ive gone as far as trying to sneak up on the bevel set with 1k, 2k, 3k and it still fails. Shows you and i just dont have the secrets figured out yet.

Yea, what RezDog said.

Bob

Experience will fix all Woes, the razor mentioned is a good razor,

Famous quote " honing is easy till it ain't " Tc

You cannot expect to use the exact same honing method on two different razors and get the same result. Razors differ in grind, hardness, carbon content, etc. The steel in a Gold Dollar razor is rather soft, so the razor will hone up quickly. A Thiers Issard with C135 steel will test your mettle. Razors with O1 steel that have been cryogenically treated can also be quite hard and difficult to hone.

As has been said previously, the key is getting a good bevel set. You keep honing on the 1K until you get a good bevel with a uniform apex. No body can tell you how long that process will take on a given razor. It takes as long as it takes. that is where a good magnifying glass or microscope can come in handy.

Well, provided that the bevel is set, it sounds like maybe the blade/edge has a different shape or profile and your stroke isn't removing the coarser scratches as you go up the grit scale.

You should at least once in your honing development shave off each stone that you use from the bevel setter up. You'll find that the coarser stones will actually shave better than you might have thought, but the shave won't be very smooth. To get the edge 'shave smooth', you need to remove all the scratches at each stage until the only ones left are from the final finisher.

In most cases, this does not mean that you need to hone more, but that you need to hone smarter and ensure that the entire bevel looks the same when you check it under magnification, toe, middle and heel. I hone a lot of razors, but as mentioned, they're not all the same and you kind of have to feel each one out with respect to your stoke and pressure management to keep the full length of the bevel consistent as you progress up the grits.

Cheers, Steve

Yes, indeed it's that 1K stone the magic 1K stone, where your journey begins and where your happy ending will be determined, get it right there and the rest of the progression is a walk in the park.

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Originally Posted by RezDog

The bevel set is the foundation. All the magic happens on the 1K and 4K hones. I look almost straight down on the edge, not the side of the bevel to check that it is a perfectly formed apex from toe to heel. Any sparkles, lines or flat spots show there. You should be able to get a decent shave off the 1K. From there you are refining what is there and making if sharper and smoother. If the apex is not perfect it does not matter how pretty the sides of the bevel look.

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This part is what I have trouble with. My eysesight is not so good up close. Even with using a magnifying glass and 60x loupe I have trouble seeing the edge properly to see the bebel well. I have to rely on feel and the way it cuts arm hair.

As others stated, the magic happens at the 1k level. Until it has brought both sides together, do not pass go, do not collect $200. The bevel set should only take a few minutes. If you grind away for half an hour, you're losing precious metal(pun intended). If you find yourself grinding away, without getting results, send it out.

I honed my first two razors with success. The third one was very stubborn. As it was a Wade & Butcher, and I didn't want to ruin it, I sent it out. I feel confident that today, after lots of practice, I could bread knife the razor and sharpen it right back up.

The point of my rambling, is if you have a problematic razor, either send it out, or set it aside to work on after you've gained experience. Ideally, you could meet up with someone that could sharpen it while you watch and learn.

I recently learned that when a razor was shaving "OK", not dropping all the way to the 1K to reset the bevel, but start at let's say a 4K helped me out tremendously. Maybe because this way you straighten up the work you've put in earlier a bit extra, and still remove enough metal when the bevel was not set a 100% previously?
But as I'm still learning, it's just my thought.

It doesn't matter that much what grit stone you use to set a bevel, but of course a 1K will get you there much faster. I do get better readings when I come off a 4K when probing my edge.

I like the 1K Naniwa, but it cuts fast so I don't overuse it, my 4K is my bevel perfecter or whatever you could call it. I mess around with 'em, just gotta figure out how to test the edge and what to look for. You can set bevels on the 4K, but will take much longer. (I often go to a fast Coticule on water and then through a Naniwa progression starting at the 4K, I do quite an amount of laps tbh) (I find the Naniwa 1K to be a good metal remover and the 4K a great 'bevel' polisher, set bevel on 1K and I perfect it on the 4K followed by more polishing on the 8k and finish on the 12K)

That said, if looking at the edge is not a viable option, maybe a marker to color in the edge of the razor (making sure the entire edge is getting honed, if not we'll need to do more laps or honing gymnastics) and a arm / leg shave hair test can help as well trying to figure out if the bevel is set. If my razor shaves arm hair WELL I go up in the progression, if it's somewhat OK I perfect the bevel until it does (I usually do this on the 4K, if that's taking too long I go back to the 1K. I have noticed my 1K doesn't like pressure, I use it carefully as I've found out the hard way it cuts pretty fast with pressure without stopping to look at things (: ; unless of course a lot of metal has to be removed fast, but then you'll need more smoothing these out later)

If your results coming off the 1K and 4K are good and shaving hair well, a progression through your stated hones shouldn't create much problem.

If I do still not get good results after finishing a razor, I go back to the 4K then 8K and finish off on the 12K.
Sometimes more laps help, either it perfects the bevel more or it smooths out the previous scratches, either way I repeat until I get the desired results.

Going through the synthetic set-up there's not much question about the hones themselves as compared to let's say a Coticule, I used to have good bevels but bad finishing, ergo my shaves were not great and it took me a long time and a good finishing hone to figure that one out.

Good luck and report back

I would do a pyramid on your 4K - 8K stones. see Pyramid honing guide - Shave Library.

I finally got around to honing this straight razor yesterday. I simply did a few more laps on my 12k Naniwa and then a 100 or so laps on my strop and its performing much better now. I decided I might aswell try smoothing it out before I turned to resetting the bevel.

Thanks to everybody for the idea, information and suggestions, it was much appreciated!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kirasy

I finally got around to honing this straight razor yesterday. I simply did a few more laps on my 12k Naniwa and then a 100 or so laps on my strop and its performing much better now. I decided I might aswell try smoothing it out before I turned to resetting the bevel.

Thanks to everybody for the idea, information and suggestions, it was much appreciated!

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Sometimes, a few days off from honing a difficult razor really helps.
Before honing any razor I always check for frowns and assess the level of hone wear. A frown will be nearly impossible to hone until it's removed and an extra layer of tape on a worn spine can be like magic on a worn spine

Also I realized that a large part of it may have been that I had been using a larger near near wedge straight razor the week previous so I took me a day to readjust my angle and technique. I feel a little silly for not first suspecting that.

That is where my using each razor for around a week started. I don’t think it makes that big of a difference now, but in the early days doing many days with the same blade made for a higher ration of fantastic shaves.