Absolute disaster; ready to throw in the towel
I have just spent the past 4 hours trying to hone two razors for the first time. I used to think I was a patient person, but I'm now so frustrated with the whole honing thing that I'm ready to chuck my razors and stones right out the window.
I started off with a vintage Sheffield razor I got on ebay for the purpose of honing. When I first got it, I thought it was amazingly sharp for an ebay special. It shaved arm hair with ease and passed the HHT with ease. Somehow, though , it seemed to quickly lose its edge, and just did not cut very well after a number of shaves.
Enter my Norton 4K/8K. I tried Josh's conservative pyramid a time or two, but the razor still seemed dull; maybe even duller than before. As I was honing, I noticed that the edge of the razor did not rest evenly against the hone. At first, I thought it might be the hone. The hone had been lapped by a professional, however; also, I tested the razor on other surfaces that I knew were flat. Same problem---the razor "rocked" a bit back and forth---when the spine was completely flat against the hone, the toe side of the edge was flat, but the heel side of the edge was not. I worked on it solely on the 4K side, hoping to even it out. That didn't work, so I decided to whip out my DMT 8C 325 grit stone. I honed. And I honed. And I honed.
Okay---this is the part where all the honemeisters will either laugh or cringe . . . I honed for over an hour on the 325 grit stone. I was determined to even out the blade. Well after an hour and a half, the rocking motion seemed almost gone, but the blade now was as dull as could be. And, when I looked at the bevel, it was completely out of whack. On one side of the blade, the bevel starts out nice and wide near the heel and then narrows down to almost nothing near the toe. On the reverse side, the opposite: wide near the toe, tapering off to almost nothing near the heel. ARRRGGG!!!
Anyone know what happened here? What should I do next?
Okay, so I gave up on the old Sheffield and decided just to chill out and do some "safer" honing on my Double Arrow that also seemed to have gotten dull. I did Josh's conservative pyramid---absolutely no results. I did the pyramid again two more times---dull as can be. I then decided to just start doing 5 passes or so on just the 4K side and testing until I could get it to pass the HHT & shave arm hair. I repeated this many, many times, and the razor just seemed to be getting duller & duller. I got so frustrated with failing the HHT that I finally wrapped the hair completely around the blade and tugged on both ends of the hair---it was so dull it didn't even cut the hair then.
Each time I honed with both razors, I began with just minimal pressure---just enough to keep the spine and edge of the blade flat on the stone. Out of frustration, however, I gradually started adding a bit more pressure. Otherwise, I tried my best to follow the directions I've seen from Josh, Lynn, and other tutorials.
GRRRR! I had heard so often that honing has a steep learning curve, and boy do I believe it now.
I'm so tempted to just box everything up and sell it off. I've been shaving on and off for the past 4 months with straights, and the shaving part had really begun to improve. The amount of maintenance this takes, though, is just unbelievable.
Any words of comfort, to keep me from bagging the whole str8 thing? I really don't want to spend any more money or time having a pro hone them for me. Besides, I don't know how that would help me with my own honing. Where do I go from here?:gth