Thread: First Attempt at Honing

Originally Posted by Sleekit

After watching Lynns DVD and then reading this post I'm confused. The above seems an awful lot of passes on the hone. Hell, you may be right it appears to be working! I'm in the process of of learning to hone and am currently trying with "Lynns Pyramid" style starting at 5 passes on the 4000 grit Norton and following on the 8000. I finish off on a Belgian coticule with about 20 passes then strop up for about 50 passes.
Thing is this is not quite getting the edge ( I'm aware there may be more wrong than the numbers here). Are you only on the 4000 then onto the 8000 or switching between them?

Looks like you need more practice. You may not need many passes (depends on the condition of your razor), but they have to be good. I would suggest you stop using the coticule until you get the razor to shave properly off the norton. There is nothing wrong with making more passes once the razor is honed - the main challenge in honing is actually to know where your razor is. Yes you'll wear the razor a bit more, (on the 8k level it'll take you ages to get any significant amount of metal off the edge) but so what I bet you won't be able to tell the difference between 4/8 and 255/512 razor.

Back to the hone it is then!