Thread: Barber hone or..?

Hi all

I am new to honing my razor.

I have up to now only used a leather strop and a paddle one with paste. So far it has been working good.

But, I feel more and more I need to get a hone.

So, to my question; why did the barber used hone to do the light re-sharpening of a razor and not a paddle strop with paste? Price?

Thanks for looking

Cheers
Vegard_dino

Hi,

I'm not sure all barbers used stones.

About 6 weeks ago I bought a DOVO that came with a loom strop pasted with green and red DOVO pastes and a hanging strop with the linen side pasted with Thier-Issard paste. The guy I bought it from told me he had used the razor every day for a year and that it had never touched a stoen. During this year he touched up the razor once on the loom strope. Apparently, before he bought the straight razor, this old barber told him he had never used a stone in his life, so he bought what this guy recommended.

My first reaction was to remove all the pastes (up to that time, I had never used anything but a Swaty and no pastes). I shaved with the razor and it was so smooth that a couple times I had to touch my face to see if any hair was removed. Since then, I've but both stropes back the way they were and will keep using the strops on this razor, just to see if I ever need to use a stone (my guess is, I will not). I will not use the stropes on my other razors (that I polish/finish on a 16K Shapton) just to see how things go.

Classic Shaving sell the DOVO pastes for 4.99 $ and the Thier-Issard for 8.99 $. There are many threads on how to make low cost strops here on SRP.

Green paste according to what I found on web sites has an average particle size of 6 microns (Shapton rate their 2 000 grit stone at 7,35 microns) and red paste 2 to 4 microns (Shapton rate their 6 000 grit stone at 2,45 micron). Classic Shaving equate Thier-Isaard paste to a 10 000 grit barber hone.

Maybe somebody else here uses strops exclusively and can tell you how long these tubes of pastes last (many years, is my guess).

Has to why barber used barber stones, it may be simply because they need no maintenance (some lap them, mine has been in use for probably more than 80 years and as never been lapped) and fit in a pocket. I don't know how much they cost when they were popular, maybe in was a factor too. There's also personal preferences and history (I used one because my father used one and never used pastes).

While I'm sure not "all" barbers used stones, I have no idea of what percentage of them did. Millions of these stones were sold for sure. But there was a time where everybody used open blades.So maybe only 1 in 500 (or 1 in 100) went to a barber, I don't know.

You could use pastes, abrasives sheets (2,10 CAD per sheet at Lee Valley) or wait for a good deal on a stone (chinese 12K is only 34.99 USD at Woodcraft and most seem to like them). I believe most here use mixed systems.

Good day,

McKie