Thread: Honing Heresy

Originally Posted by gssixgun

+1 from me too, we both have been saying this for a long time....

If you are only a shaver, you only need to maintain the edge, that's it.... and what the heck for the price of one pack of Fusion's you can have the razor honed professionally anytime you want or need....

Good luck with keeping all the AD's at bay that's what does you in

++1 on that too. Keeping a good edge is one thing, chasing the perfect edge is another entirely.

Yeah, I bought a Norton 8k, and a barber hone and got great results for several months... And then I bought another, and another, and then a coticule, and then a Nakayama and then etc.

Originally Posted by nun2sharp

If youve got a good barber hone and only wish to maintain a razor and not restore or repair this is the way to go.

+2. A barber hone is all you/I need to maintain a sharpened edge (I use newspaper sometimes, too).

But playing with ebay specials and antique store acquisitions is hard to resist sometimes...
(I'm lapping up some barber hones on a D8XX as I post this)

I sometimes wish I was content with just one finishing/touch-up hone....But I'd always be left wondering: "could it be any better?" So that's how my love for stones began....Now have a couple of coticules, a vintage thurigian (and another on it's way RIGHT now) and going to pick up a chinese 12k just for kicks!

It's true, all you need is a barber hone...but what's the fun in only owning one hone???? (HAD ALERT!!)

Originally Posted by trewornan

I'm going to explain how I've learned to hone my razors but this is so different from the methods usually advocated that I suspect I may get some criticism - however I want to make clear that this is not a troll. I'm just explaining what I've found works and throwing it out there for comments. I'm also quite a newbie (only been using a striaght for about 18 months) so I may be missing something and am absolutely not in a position to tell anyone else they're wrong, even if it sometimes seems that way to me.

I've got a Corundum Brand razor hone (it's a 115S if anyone cares) that I bought off ebay for $10. Every couple of months I lather this up and give my razor a few strokes (literaly just back and forth 3 or 4 times). I then shave straight off this and if I find it's not as good as I would hope I'll do exactly the same the next day - once I even had to do it a third day to get the edge I wanted.. Having honed the razor I then go back to stropping on an unpasted linen and leather strop before each shave and I'm set up for another couple of months.

Originally my razor was honed by theinvisibleedge so if I was starting from a razor in really bad condition maybe I'd need a Norton, Coticules, Pasted strops, etc although having said that I do have a couple of Wapis that I got in factory condition and honed up in substantially the same way (with a lot more strokes admittedly). I'm getting great shaves using honing equipment that cost next to nothing and with minimal effort

I question whether it's really necessary to spend a lot of money on waterstones and pasted strops if you only want to maintain a shaveable razor. Sure if you're fixing up razors with essentially no edge to begin with or honing out chips in the edge you probably need all this stuff and to hone in pyramids and so on, but for me it's just not necessary. As I said I'm not a honemeister and this is just what works for me.

This is the way to go just to maintain a blade. The problem is that once you get RAD your collection of straights will grow and the need for other hones with it. I have suggested a barber hone for the new guys starting out and mentioned that it can wait a couple of months before getting it. Just be careful not to bump the edge of the blade on anything.

I've been operating this way for about three years now.

Originally Posted by dac

I've been operating this way for about three years now.

All I can say is that you must have a lot of will power.....

Thanks guys. I really wasn't expecting so much agreement. It's nice to know I'm not completely out there and under some sort of misapprehension about how sharp my razor needs to be.

@ mkevenson

I don't know of any sure fire way to tell the grit of the barber hones. For the most part the most talked about names provide great edges but even that's not a sure thing. I've seen people talk about Swaty's that were a bit rough.

It really comes down to using the stone and shaving, if you like the edge then you've got a good stone.

Also, just to complicate things, some stones have different grits on each side.

The best way is to get one from the classifieds here, that way you're getting it from someone who can vouch for how fine it is. On the other hand if you see one going for cheap on the Bay it usually doesn't hurt to snag it and hope it's fine enough, worst case you have a stone you can use on a razor that requires a touch more work than a fine stone can give it.

Thanks for the post! It is a subject that a lot of new guys never see or hear about. One of our guys, David Uthe, said he shaved for a long time by just touching up the edge on a hanging linen strop with the white paste ( probably talcum powder of some kind). I imagine that a Coticule would do the same or any number of other fine grit abrasives.

For a bunch of us we just like the pursuit of the perfect edge and thus over complicate things. The fact that we also monkey around with a number of different razors in various conditions merely allows us to be even more compulsive.

To me the minimum to maintain an excellent edge for years is a 4000 grit to restore/maintain a bevel and some finishing grit of 8000-10000 to shave with.

Just my $.02,