Thread: Honing question.

So I watched Lynns DVD. He says, and Ive seen many people say this, that you should use an x pattern while honing.

My question is... wouldnt this wear the tip down way faster that the end near the tang?

Makes sense to me why so many razors I see have a worn down spine at the tip of the razor.

I mean the tip is touching the stone the whole stroke, the end by you hand barely touches it for very long, the middles is somewhere in the middle of course.

not necessarily - you shouldn't wear the razor in any noticeable manner - if you're honing as much that you can see the width decrease you need to brush up on what 'light touch, uniform strokes' mean
now I also thought as you did, until I started honing. However there is the opposite effect that the pressure naturally is distributed a bit more towards the heel, which compensates the more time the tip spends on the hone. In any case as I said this is a secondary effect, the most important is that when you have good honing technique the blade does not wear off much.
Alternatively you may strop along the hone, but holding the razor at 45 degree angle (heel leading), or having the razor at angle Y and X-pattern at angle (45degrees -X), this still ensures that the striations are at 45 degree angle with the edge.
I'd venture to say that 45 degree angle while the recommended one isn't an absolute, 30degree or 60 degree striations will still work but my understanding is that having a decent angle is important for the 'slicing' effect when shaving.

hope this helps, and remember that's my understanding of the process, not necessarily the truth. I don't have all that much experience.

The following are the musings of someone (me) without too much experience at the hone. They should thus be taken with at least a pinch of smelling salts.

When you hone, you remove metal. Since the heel spends less time on the hone than the tip, my thought is that the honing would be more efficient closer to the tip, even though it might not be noticeable right away as wear. Old razors might show this, though.

If this isn't what is seen (any experienced honers should chime in at this point), clearly there is something in the honing technique which evens out this skewness. I can't believe it is all due to pressure difference, as a 6 cm long razor would need a pressure 6 times greater at the heel-most centimeter than at the tip to compensate for the shorter time spent on the hone. (That's under a lot of assumptions, of course: Even, straight stroke on hone, amount of removed metal proportional to friction etc.)

Any thoughts would be appreciated, as I've wondered about this myself.

Originally Posted by EricSS

So I watched Lynns DVD. He says, and Ive seen many people say this, that you should use an x pattern while honing.

My question is... wouldnt this wear the tip down way faster that the end near the tang?

Makes sense to me why so many razors I see have a worn down spine at the tip of the razor.

I mean the tip is touching the stone the whole stroke, the end by you hand barely touches it for very long, the middles is somewhere in the middle of course.

The razors with the extra wear on the toe end are that way not because of the x-stroke but in spite of it.

If you hone properly using only the weight of the razor you will naturally have a tiny bit more pressure at the heel than the toe this tends to even out the amount of metal taken off by a larger hone. Don't worry about the math, it works.

Historically the barbers hones are narrower than the razors width. The barbers manuals teach that this, even with a proper stroke will cause a frown and they show how to correct this by additional attention to the heel AND toe. By the way they all teach the x-pattern stroke.

I suspect that the many razors we see with extra hone wear, especially at the toe are caused by two handed honers probably on to coarse a stone as well, it has nothing to do with the x pattern and was probably caused by a guy going straight up and down the the stone just as he did for his chisels.

I think this all makes sense.... Ill just take it from the masters and do as they do I suppose!

As someone who works metals every working day I would have to disagree with some of what has been mentioned. For one thing if you rub an abrasive on some thing it wears....period. If you rub it more it wears more. Now if you hone with the X patern over time it will cause more wear to the toe than the heel. The X patern however creates a better edge for many people and is how you get a uniform edge on a narrow hone. Barbers while they cared for their razors could replace them and didn't treat them the same way we do. To think that most of the old worn razors have more toe wear because they honed improperly might be wrong as a good many of them were from barbers.

Hey no matter what we do we wear down or blades.Thank the fates that we have people making new ones for us.