Thread: Scratches on Blade from Bevel Setter

Just to add a comment about the difference between straight razors, especially hollow ones, and knives, I started honing razors >10 years ago, coming from high end Japanese kitchen knives. I rarely used a hone under 5k, except when I had a little chip or something, then I’d get out a 1k. I never had a diamond plate, though admittedly I did not do heavy restores.

I wondered why SR honers had all these coarse hones. 220, 320, 500, DMTs, What? The reason is that if you need to remove a small chip or correct geometry on a straight, you can’t push very hard or the edge will flex and bad things will happen. So if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life removing a chip, you need fast coarse hones. With a knife you can just bear down and push (a lot) harder on a finer hone.