Thread: Interesting honing technique from an old 1970s Suehiro demonstation video

https://youtu.be/hf17cwEuqf0?t=359 -- I thought the honing stroke demonstrated on the western straight razor was quite interesting. And the technique shown for the Japanese straight was enlightening to me, as well.

Maybe some here might enjoy.

This is linked on the Suehiro "Kouseki" 10k stone webpage. https://www.suehiro-toishi.com/en/kouseki/srk-10000/

Nice vid. The methods used for both razors used is quite common. I remember reading gssixgun using the "pig tail" stroke some time ago. I've used it a few times mainly as finishing strokes.

great video. thanks for the links!

Nice video.
Another cool thing is that you can tell how light he is on the hone.
Thanks for posting.

Pete <:-}

And I found the pigtail stroke from a barber in Britain named Liam, who probably found it in one of the older barber's manuals

What I found more interesting is the Kamisori honing, it confirms the honing ratio and sides

Cool video! Thank's for the link too, I have never seen that video. Nicely done video for being way back in those days.

The pigtail stroke seems to just be a way to increase travel distance across the hone per stroke, IOW, cut more.

My typical honing regimen is two sets of 20 circles and ellipses followed by 40 edge leading strokes, flipping the blade each stroke. The purpose of the circles and ellipses are to get more ‘mileage’ on the edge quickly before the edge leading finish strokes. This works for most razors most of the time. Hard Swedish and cryo steels a little more, mellow old Sheffields a little less, so YMMV on the number.

The kamisori part is interesting. Many folks recommend 3-1, 6-1, or 10-1 omote-ura, so that’s not really different, but I noted that he did spine leading on the ura side. I wish I could understand Japanese to see if he said anything about that.

Interesting post!

I suspect the circles do more than just increase the distance traveled on the hone when going from one end to the other: I usually did only edge-leading strokes and had issues with wire edges. After recently adding no more than one or two edge trailing strokes before changing grits, excepting the ultimate and sometime penultimate hone, in addition to a small deburring side-to-side motion along the length of the edge, I've noticed much improvement with regards to wire edges and overhoning.

And something similar occurred after I integrated some x-strokes.

I'm sure there's more than one way to skin this cat; but looking at the video and considering my [admittedly limited] experience I suspect the circle at the start of the stroke, combined with the ~45˚ of the edge with regard to the direction of travel, and also the X pattern all combine to some cumulative effect. As I say, I'm sure there are other ways to get there; but based on the changes I've made recently and the marked improvement I've noticed, I'm not convinced the edge-trailing section of the circle only serves to increase mileage on the hone -- I do think it has an effect at the edge.

You may well be correct, IDK with certainty either. Wire edges are generally caused by too much time on one side, aggressive (fast) hones, and too much pressure. You can raise a wire edge/burr at will with a lot of pressure on one side on a good hone, you do it all the time with knives or fixing factory Gold Dollars the first time. The cure is light pressure, shorter strokes, flipping the edge each stoke, and you can usually hone them off.

One thing I believe is see here is something Ron had explained to me a few years ago. Particularly when honing a razor that not making even contact, focus on the 3/4 to an inch of the stones edge. If you draw an imaginary line down the length of it and just focus on that, you be better positioned to get the whole blade into contact. Basically, a rolling x. It’s just a different way to think about it.