Thread: simple honing under the stereo scope

Originally Posted by onimaru55

A sharp edge can be built in many ways but how durable is it ?
Seeing how long it survives just using a strop as maintenance would be a good follow up experiment. Of course that would be a measure of the steel as well.

I am doing that experiment with the razor that I honed with this method, though it might take a while as I only use that razor for fill in and travel.

Originally Posted by eKretz

Anyone who thinks that they can hone with any other method just until the bevels meet at a perfect apex without removing any excess steel is fooling themselves IMO.

With all do respect;

You are probably correct, but the burr method mandates that steel loss.

Used to be a video floating around of one of the ex mods . I think it was Joed.
Dude was like a metronome on fast when he honed
That cat never chased a burr or needed to.

We all do what we can with what we have. It's all fun. Just don't wear out your singing razors.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Just don't wear out your singing razors.

No worries, I used a beater for this experiment.

I love watching Mastro Livi videos of the creation of a razor. He is such an artisan.

I found this video in which he expounds on using stones to create a bevel and sharpen the edge. As usual he is quite opinionated and takes a minimalist approach. He uses a 3000 grit synthetic stone to set a bevel, a coticule to hone and an Arkansas to finish. He uses the Arkansas with water.

https://youtu.be/FdkI4Q8_qhs

When you listen carefully, he appears to use quite a bit of pressure on the coticule.

Joe, I am curious about how you feel what he says/demonstrates fits in with your take on honing.

dzec,


I also love watching livi's videos. the new ones are not near as good as the ones that were up a year or so ago by another fella that was doing them. I wish the others would get reposted somewhere, heck I would purchase copies of the old ones.


to me, livi really shows the difference between someone who is making/restoring razors for a living, vs a hobbiest, vs a regular guy who just wants to shave with his razor. livi's approach is straight to the point, no bs, no wondering if the bevel is set, no guesswork, just a straight up do this, do this, do this and go shave with the thing.


of course I don't speak the same language as livi, and so normally keep the volume pretty low and just read the captions and watch what he is doing. when something didn't make a whole lot of sense, I went and duplicated what I saw him doing to see if I could see what he was seeing. an example of that would be what you were talking about with the amount of pressure he seems to use while honing. the way the stone moves around, and the sound if you turn it up, makes it seem like he is using a lot of pressure. but if you try to hold the stone by the end like he does, I found that you really cant use a lot of pressure without stressing out your fingers, and that position offers really good feedback between the razor and stone.


on one of the taken down videos, he went through this same video in much greater detail. and explained the back and forth stroke, and the caption read that the forward motion cuts, and the backward smooths, and that is about what I have noticed.


I notice that livi does not fear the burr like most do. on other videos, when he is grinding the razor, he does something very close to Bruno's foil method, but he creates the burr on the first wheel, then stays off it for the remaining wheels, until he gets the level of hollow he is after. so once he gets to the stones, there is already a burr that just needs refined, smoothed, weakened, and then removed, which means he can use it during his honing as a tool to let him know when to change stones.


just a couple more things:


livi is a maker, which means that while this might be the joy in his working life, it still means that he needs to work as efficiently as he can

he always strops on that heavily loaded loom strop, and looks sort of heavy handed to me when he does, but I don't know what tension is on the strop, so cant say for certain. with the angle that the edge is being stropped, the stones just set the edge up, and he is microbeveling on the strop {there is probably a better way to say that, but that's the best I got this morning}

I don't think that what he calls a full hollow, is the same as say a vintage or new dovo full hollow. I saw a couple of his razors at the razor makers meet with blues last year, and noticed right off that they are nowhere near as thin as what blues normally grinds, or what you would think of when someone mentions "full hollow". now that was just a couple of his razors, so I don't know if he left those thicker, or if that is representative of his normal grinds or not, but the grinds on those would give much more latitude on the amount of pressure on the strop or stones that you could use.



a couple things for the rest of the thread:

the burr is a tool, not to be feared, but to be used when appropriate, as in when setting the bevel and to let you know when to change grits if you don't have optics.

not all burrs are created equal. the burr from a soft, weak grained steel can be a complete not nice thing to get rid of. while the burr from a quality steel, with good heat treat is a wonderfull thing to use and then remove. you can have big burrs, small ones, rough, and fine. ive seen burrs that came off the edge an inch long off a soft cheap kitchen knife, and ones that came off like fine powder from one of my custom kitchen knives.

and remember its just a chunk of steel, and all you are doing is rubbing it on a rock until you get what you want.

Thank you for the detailed reply Joe. Now I have to go away and try a few things with my stones and loupe.

Originally Posted by caltoncutlery

dzec,

I notice that livi does not fear the burr like most do.

I do not believe most fear the burr but simply see no need to raise one in the course of honing a straight razor. Each to their own though.

Bob

Bob,

take a look at the first reply to this whole thread


"Afraid you lost me after mentioning burrs."


that was the whole reply.

nothing else.

what do you think a newbie to straight razor honing thinks after they read something like that?

id think that they would think one of two things:
1. is that a burr must be a bad thing instead of just a thing and that whoever posted that must think a burr is a demon to be avoided at all cost.
or
2. whoever would reply something like that with no explaination is looking to up their post count to impress their internet friends.

Originally Posted by caltoncutlery

Bob,

take a look at the first reply to this whole thread


"Afraid you lost me after mentioning burrs."


that was the whole reply.

nothing else.

what do you think a newbie to straight razor honing thinks after they read something like that?

id think that they would think one of two things:
1. is that a burr must be a bad thing instead of just a thing and that whoever posted that must think a burr is a demon to be avoided at all cost.
or
2. whoever would reply something like that with no explaination is looking to up their post count to impress their internet friends.

I see your point. Just should have added that most simply see no need to raise a burr when honing a straight razor. That really should be self evident if anyone cruises the honing sub forum for a while. There is always more than one way to skin a cat though. Seems knife makers turning their hand to making straight razors are advocates of the raising the burr method while traditional straight razor users do not for the most part have that in their normal honing routine.

Bob