Thread: Heel first or last

Originally Posted by Grazor

All the old barbers manuals show heal leading. Possibly to stop a heel hook forming, or to keep the stabiliser out of the way.
No doubt there was a reason.
Lost count of razors I have seen worn out at the toe, I guess they didn't read the manual...

Well it's also not very natural going toe first and normally not necessary. In fact I almost never do with my razors. With my kitchen knives on the other hand I do the toe forward much more often. My wife does this thing which I can't get her to stop. She likes to cut foods (meats mainly) still in the pan or on a plate instead of on a cutting board so it badly dulls the tips. I have worn myself out asking her not to do that but to no avail. I actually got her a really nice large wood cutting board for Christmas several years ago which resides on the counter next to the stove and she won't use it for cutting or chopping on because she doesn't want to mark it up. ..."uhhhhh, Honey. That's why they call it a (air quotes) 'cutting board.' "

Ya with my larger kitchen knives I do toe first too, and then after the toe is repaired I go heel first to get everything right

Ha! Thinking about PaulFLUS' and Tc's comments about sharpening the toes of knives and I'm saying 'Yeah, but you are still mostly sharpening perpendicular to the tangent, it only appears to be toe leading because of the belly in the knife.'

With that in mind I started thinking about honing my smiling razors. Since I'm always doing a rolling X stroke, I think that it does appear 'Toe leading' by the time I'm finishing the stroke. Kind of a windshield wiper movement as the razor moves down the hone. Since there is still a lateral pulling motion the stria still shows a bias relative to the tangent as if I was honing heel leading.

I'm thinking about it too much right now to analyze exactly what I do. I have some honing to do over the next few days and I'll pay attention to my natural stroke.

To maybe clarify my meaning, my 8”” knives tend to need more work on the front 2” of the blade, it’s the area of the blade that gets dull first, that point is the pivot, now I start just point first on the blade and hone that dull spot up . Then I do full laps the heel first to even up my edge. The last half of the blade isn’t taking much dulling

Originally Posted by bluesman7

With that in mind I started thinking about honing my smiling razors. Since I'm always doing a rolling X stroke, I think that it does appear 'Toe leading' by the time I'm finishing the stroke. Kind of a windshield wiper movement as the razor moves down the hone. Since there is still a lateral pulling motion the stria still shows a bias relative to the tangent as if I was honing heel leading.

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Did some honing today and paid attention. Yes, my stroke using a rolling X on a smiling razor is pretty much exactly like I described above. As the pressure point moves from heel to toe, the tangent of the smile at that point stays perpendicular to the long axis of the stone. So heel leading at the beginning of the stroke and toe leading at the finish.