Thread: Finishing on dry hone

Dear honing-community,

I‘m again in my experimenting phase and trying out different finishers dry.

While honing I do not hold the hone horizontaly, I rather tilt it between around 45 degrees up to even holding it almost verically and let the razor just slide up and down on it.
With this method seems like I can significantly reduce the honing pressure and get much keaner results.

Have successfully tried this meehod with Zulu Grey, translucent Arkansas. YG Thuringian and Coticule (no test-shave yet)

All hones seemed to improve the keeness of the eazor by remaining the feel to the skin.

Till now Thuri provides the best results, testes with 5/8 Tennis razor.

Dey Coticule edge yet to be test shaved.

Have someone else got any experience with using whetstones dry?

Happy honing
Philipp

Not a dry hone but have used strop paste on a 1/2" thick sheet of glass. Nice edge even before stropping. After stropping even better.

I've done some spine leading strokes on a few finishers.
Helped on the Coti, some.

Haven't seen any significant differences, though.

I used to play around as well with dry hones and found that I got nothing out of it. Scratch patterns were slightly more pronounced as well.

Not a fan of a "Dry Hone" but especially on the final phase of honing on the broken down slurry on my Nakayama if I let the stone go to "Damp" it does work

Taking the way-way back machine I used to use that "Damp" routine on the Norton 8k trying to squeeze the most out of it back when that was pretty much all any of us were using

I start out dry on my 8x3 SB Arkansas (burnished almost to glass-like surface), and progress to water, then water with a drop of dish soap, then wash and dry thoroughly, then finish on WD-40. This is with a razor that is already "finished" on a Norton 8 or Nani 12.

It might be interesting to see how much one could improve a Nani 12 edge just using dry strokes, and progressively less pressure. I too have used Glenn's Norton 8k method of letting it dry (which it does very quickly) and doing some ultralight dry strokes at the end-with good results as I recall.

I would think that any finisher used dry would have to be ultra-fine (as yours no doubt are) to get away with not having the slip-n-glide that water or other lube might let us get away with over a less fine surface.

As long as you have the fundamentals down, are process-oriented, and a good diagnostic honer who can usually match up theory with results, I dig that you're experimenting. Ever so often I will get bored and start trying crazy honing experiments. Some of the ones that have worked have taken my honing to the next level over what I used to be able to get out of my stones. Thanks for sharing your idea.

I dont dought that it works because a few have tried this. Some say no. But with a dry stone id think the scratches left behind would be deeper. Although we are talking about a finishing stone so its very fine.

Learning to get that perfect edge leeds to all types of experimenting. Keep it up!

Dry slurry works for me on finishing, Nakayama.
The Chosera 10k works dry.
Never tried it though..

I've had great results on a dry Coticule

Short update:
Today I‘ve tried to finish the same Tennis razor on the same dry Thuringian but with some dry slurry on it.
This has resulted in slightly decreased keeness but remarkably increased smootheness to the skin.

Next I will try to fine tune the ballance between the keeness and the smoothness.

Regards
Philipp