Thread: simple honing under the stereo scope

as far as I know, you create a burr both in both directions on a stone. in my mind as soon as you abrade a side of a chunk of steel at the same angle until it meets the other side you get a burr, no matter which direction you go. the only difference is how heavy or light the burr is and at what grit.

the trailing strokes are more to even out whatever grit you finish taking the bevels to and "max" that stone out. the shaping and polishing strokes can be back and forth, circles, angles, write the alphabet with the blade, whatever.

I spent days in the shop trying to figure out the whole "how do you get both edge bevels to meet without creating a burr", then, when you do succeed, the very next stone in whatever grit succession will push the edge past meeting and create a burr. trying to guess at what level you must stop on each stone to prevent a burr which is easily delt with at the end, drove me bonkers.


now I can hone a razor either with what I showed in the video, or with the traditional way. but the way I showed is the fastest and most fool proof method I have seen. instead of fearing a simple burr, use it to tell you when you are done with each step, and then remove it, and get on with shaving and life.


now that I think of it, I don't think ive ever cleaned my strop so I guess I better do that pretty soon, thanks :}

Joe, i could be wrong as it wouldnt be the first time, but if your honing one lap at a time on both sides (even honing not one sided) and edge leading, i dont see how a bur could be brought to be. As you are only one lap ahead on one side at any time.

we will try it on sunday with the scope. I am not a betting man, but would bet a bright shiny new quarter that that burr will still be there. it will be very fine according to the stone being used, and centered with each stroke, which is why you cant feel it with your fingers, but it will still be there.

take a look at the very nice drawing of a burr earlier in the thread, if you abrade one side of a chunk of steel at the same angle to where it meets the other side, the very next stroke should cause a burr as the steel at the very edge is too weak to hold on to the body of the chunk of steel. in my video, we can see this at 6000 grit. im betting that we can see it with that lense at higher grits, and still more with the other lense.


ill bring the gopro and we can record what we see.

Insee what your saying. The bur would be so tiny i dont think it would be a benifit or hinderance, but i guess it wod still be there. Thanks for opening my eyes to this. Im still honing edge leading but trying new things is what makes this fun.

This video has opened my eyes on a lot of things that one could not see without a microscope. Thanks for the video, it was very informative for me to see things at each stage of the honing process, this will definitely help me refine my honing moving forward.

I would also be interested in watching the video made with alternating sides when honing too.

Originally Posted by caltoncutlery

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the biggest idea here is to get folks honing with just one or two stones,.

I really like this idea, as it kind of reminds me of how I started.

I think that this bevel set, midrange, paste approach could be just as easily accomplished with conventional bevel set tests and conventional edge leading strokes. I do see that using the burr method for the bevel set may have appeal to people who are already familiar with it from knife sharpening and this is the same group who likely already have stones that could be used in the bevel setting and mid range.

There is an awkward dichotomy in the video of using very minimal honing tools along with a high class microscope. I realize that this is valuable for analysis of what is happening and a big part showing the technique, but you appear to rely on it a bit while in the 6k range which goes against the simplicity aspect of using the burr in the midrange as a sign of when you are done with that stage. Personally the presence of a burr hides the very thing that I look at with a microscope, but presumably this technique is aimed at people who do not have scopes.

I have other thoughts about the approach and look forward to discussing them further at the meet this weekend.

Thanks for the video Joe. I know it was a lot of work for you.
Al

Joe was able to demo this technique at the Denver meet with gasman and I trying to pick it apart, in a constructive way, in real time. Joe used his halflap and burr technique up though a Norton 8k, finishing with some alternating edge trailing strokes. The results on the scope were indistinguishable, at least to me, to an edge brought to the same level with conventional methods. Again we used the scope to observe the process, but in this case all of Joe's decisions of when to move to his next stone were done before making the scope observation.

I'm not sure how much of any of this I will bring into my honing, but it was eye opening to see that some of the things that I try to avoid apparently don't need to be avoided and can actually be useful.

As razor geeks we are very prone to being stuck in our ways. It’s not easy to pitch a new perspective around here. Hopefully we will have further discussions and further experiments by more people. I am curious and look forward to seeing what happens.

It was a bit different in how it works. Learning to feel a bur on an edge is inportant in his style but the end result was faster and the look on the scope was good. The test shave is were the truth comes out in the end. I can see this working if someone wanted to hone the non tradisional way. And can be done without having lots of stones.

It really worked. But i know some folks are set in how they hone and wont change. I may use some of this method in my honing steps.