I am trying to learn how to hone my razor, but with limited success so far. A bit about the materials I have:

- A DOVO black star razor (bought it new),

- a two-sided waterhone labeled 800/6000. I bought it in japan and have read the designations used there are different from those used in the west (something to the extent that it's the average rather than smallest particle size that determines the grit size).

- a barber hone of some sort. It is fairly long (about 6" or 16 cm) and narrow (1.5" or 4 cm). I believe it may be made of slate. It is dark gray but lighter in colour than charcoal.

- a TM four sided paddle strop, a TM red latigo strop, a DOVO strop and another TM strop I don't remember the name of (the light, very smooth horse leather) (yeah, I know I've got plenty of strops but I like them and the dollar was cheap so I bought an extra)

When I press the razor flat on the hone and hold it to the light I can see it does not touch the hone evenly. Depending on which side of the blade is held against the hone it either balances on the middle or there's a gap in the middle. So it seems the blade is bend ever so slightly.

This is confirmed by my result from doing the permanent marker test:When I use a permanent marker to colour the bevel and give it 1 or 2 strokes on each side on the newly lapped japanese waterhone (lapped using wet sand paper on the back of a fairly thick mirror) some colour remains on the bevel: on one side it remains coloured in the middle but not the sides, on the other the colour is gone from the bevel in each end of the blade but not from the middle section. This just confirms it has a concave and a convex side.

Now my question is what I do about it ?

If I keep honing to flatten it I'm afraid the bevel will not end up being equally wide along each side and between the two sides. Is that a problem ?

As an experiment I tried to use a few strokes on the edge on the hone - now concentrating all pressure at one point as opposed to the whole edge/shoulder resgin on the whole width of the hone should mean a much greater pressure on the point touching the stone, but at the same time would ensure honing of the bevel is equal on both sides (if the two stroks are performed symetrically of course). This immediately got the razor much sharper, which again leads me to believe the uneven contact with the stone is the problem.

It does get sharper when I use the higher-grit and much narrower barber hone I've got, but it will still not pass the hht, though I can get it to pass the thumb pad and nail tests (to my knowledge at least).

I have a TM paddle strop (3.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.25 diamond) but I cannot get it as sharp using this as I can on the barber hone.


All comments welcome !