Thread: Rolling X - I think I figured something out

Here is a good video of Jason Knight sharpening a large knife hand holding the stones.

He recommends using a large magnet to hold a diamond plate and hot gluing, (or use the masking tape and CA glue trick) a piece of wood to the stone to keep you fingers well away from the stone face. The hot glue can be popped off or tape with no damage to the stone.

What ever it takes to keep you fingers away from the stone face and blade edge.

BTW the blue masking tape and CA is a great way to secure anything flat quickly that can be reversed with out damaging either surface.

How To Sharpen Your Kitchen Knives | Basics

Bench stone, hone in hand, whatever you like. But, watching the video of hone in hand sharpening I came up with a question for those that hone razors this way.

If the razor is in one hand and the stone is in the other...Do you set one down to add water to the hone?

I suppose you could hone at the sink with a drip running, but that puts it out of the realm of practical for me personally. A spray bottle that I grab with my free hand is just too easy and natural to me.

To the OP

Pick a system and stick to it until you have repeated success

I just read through this and thought "Whoooooo Hooooo let's confuse the new guy"

Originally Posted by CrescentCityRazors

It works better if you do NOT support the holding hand. Don't even tuck your elbow in close to your body. You want it floating out there like its in space. Don't think about where it's at. Let razor and hone find each other and dock gently. This is how you get that super light pressure that gives you a great finish.

Real quick thought progression on this.
1. Give me a break. That can't possibly work.
2. Well dummy, that's what you said before and he was right.
3. OK, I'll try.

Yes, I set the razor down, to pick up the spray bottle, my drink, to scratch, ect. I only set the hone down, for either to check with a loupe, or the next rock in the progression.

Yeah....I cut myself plenty, as a kid learning. That's why I don't set the hone down. Once you know all is clear in the way the hone is in your hand, as long as nothing changes, your good to go.

Repeatedly setting the hone down , and picking it up, just increases the chance that you'll forget to adjust for your safe zone.

As you....just seems to be the right way, and more natural.

Originally Posted by bluesman7

If the razor is in one hand and the stone is in the other...Do you set one down to add water to the hone?

I never put the razor down to add water, but I do like to hone above the sink, standing and holding the stone in hand.

While I'm honing and the stone gets dry, I keep the razor in hand and the stone as well, I use my hand that's holding the razor to open the faucet to add water or rinse the stone. I've never had an accident doing this.

Though it depends on the faucet, I don't have to turn mine, just push the handle up or down without anything in your way to bump your razor against, pretty convenient for honing actually.

If I put the stone on a kitchen scale and hone I can...

But, without in hand training not much to do but play with it and figure it out myself. When I started razor honing I read someone say "like you're trying to shave off a thin layer of the stone" and it clicked for me. Granted, it is still subjective because you have to figure out "how thin" or whatever. But, as is probably pretty clear by now, I judge basical by the feel of the blade and stone, and this got me to a thing I could consistently judge.

But, I do lessen it on each stone until I'm pretty much to the weight of the blade.

1. I am not that good at removing all the stria, yet. Getting better, but I'm still trying to learn what the 4k and 1k stria look like. And I'm not that good with my loupe, so I always miss some.

2. Pressure honing in hand is a slightly different beast that I have to work on.

I prefer bench honing because it feels like I have more control. But I was getting nowhere and found honing in hand to be successful at this stage. As I start to understand things better, I will probably try to go back to bench honing because I find the thin stones and small bones pretty awkward. But, we will see where practice leads.

I have not tried making a slurry on a synthetic stone. I've been reading your posts about it, and will probably give it a shot.

Originally Posted by Euclid440

To hone a toe, you will need to lift the heel. On a rounded toe you may need to lift the heel quite a bit to hone around the curve.

Muted spike points are another issue. The proper way to repair a muted spike, (it is a repair, this is not Garden-Variety Honing) is to hone the end of the razor, perpendicular to the edge and spine, until you remove enough material that you have a sharp corner at the toe.

It is like repairing a broken tip on a knife, to repair a broken knife tip, you grind the spine until the spine meets the edge. If you grind the edge to meet the spine, you will alter the blade profile. You see this all the time where people have ground the edge tip to meet the spine of a pocketknife and now the blade will not close fully and the tip stick up, very dangerous to carry in a pocket.

If you are repairing a muted tip, do it on a Diamond plate, if you grind on a grinder or belt sander you will probably burn the tip, the metal is very thin and will heat up very quickly and now you must grind even more.

If you just hone a muted tip from the edge, you will just make a larger rounded tip, we see a lot of these botched tip repairs.

So, if you mute, just one lite stroke on a fine stone is enough to do the job, you never know when you may want to reverse the mute and use the tip. Spike points are especially useful to shave with.

Hmm, so you shorten the blade?

Maybe what I'm looking at were not blunted toes, or at least properly blunted. There have been a couple of square points that the last 1/4" or so seem to be so drastically different I figured it was a way to blunt the tip.

If I run into another I will post pictures of the inked edge and work through it with yall.

Originally Posted by bluesman7

Bench stone, hone in hand, whatever you like. But, watching the video of hone in hand sharpening I came up with a question for those that hone razors this way.

If the razor is in one hand and the stone is in the other...Do you set one down to add water to the hone?

I suppose you could hone at the sink with a drip running, but that puts it out of the realm of practical for me personally. A spray bottle that I grab with my free hand is just too easy and natural to me.

With all my four razors of experience I put the razor down. Otherwise you lose the water when you try to pick up the stone.

But, I generally check my edge when I run out of water, so I just put everything down. I only count laps if I'm doing # of strokes on one side and the match on the other. But more often than not I just hypnotize myself pushing water to one end and bringing it back.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

To the OP

Pick a system and stick to it until you have repeated success

I just read through this and thought "Whoooooo Hooooo let's confuse the new guy"

Hahaha, fortunately I compartmentalize everything. I've got mental folders for all yall and if one method isn't working, I try the try another. There is certainly overlap in yall's files, though.

But, it's not like I ping pong back and forth. I'll be sticking with honing warped razors in hand for a while, at least.