thanks for the listing. I've seen a lot of those, but none of yours replicate any of my short stack (at least in name) yet.
I like to think of them as travel hones.
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Hirlau: The Unofficial King of the Barber Hones, I think that is your second title, the first one was Saint Hirlau.
More on my barber hone....and they are boring as someone has noted...but iconic. Aside from the incredible smoothness and the density I really like the graphics of the label in the container which itself is cool, hammered aluminum....I'm getting so jacked up now talking about it that I think I'll go home and put on my white nylon barber's smock, slip the hone into my side pocket and step outside the shop and have a cigarette. Wait, I don't have a shop and I don't smoke....
Well thanks for the compliment, but I'm sure that there are shavers out there with more barber hones than me.
I used to think that 34 straight razors was a large collection, then I started seeing guys that had tables lined up & completely covered. I think I remember reading a post when I joined of a member who had 3,500 + razors.
Just came across this dead thread. Here is my fairly up to date list and how many of each I have. Looking at this it just dawned on me that apparently I collect barber hones.
Amerco Strop Back
Apart (5)
Barbers Pet (3)
Barbers Pride
Binghams Best Brand
Blue Diamond
Chipaway
C-Mon – Combination Hone
Craftsman – Combination Hone (2)
Dan-Dee
Deluxe No 500 (2)
Exide (2)
Fernslers Ruby
Frictionite 00 (2)
Gem Cushioned Hone-Strop (2)
Guaranteed
John Primble (2)
Kanner
Karbolektrik
Keen Kutter Kombination
King Midas
Lakeside (2)
Noxall
Panama (3)
Pike – Emerald
Pike Strop Hone
Primo Strop Back
Quick & Easy SRD –
Shumate – Blue rounded corners
Shumate – Blue square corners
Shuredge
Square Deal
Steinmetz
Sure Kut
Swaty – 2 line Austria
Swaty – 3 line Austria
Titan
Tonsorial Gem
Winner – Combination Hone
Zenith
XL Barber Hones
Apart
Everkeen Strop Back
King
Pike Cristolon (2)
Plentikeen Strop Back
Swaty
Man, I've got like three! I don't have a diamond lapping stone so I haven't seriously used any of them. I know the binder is bad in one of them.
Do you frequently use barber hones for touching up or do you just like collecting them?
It's a Necro-Poll! :rofl2:
I dig matching them-up with razors I have, so collecting. They do work, but I just use my waterstones.
I still have a short-stack compared to Lazarus! ;)
I did manage to wrestle-away a 'Special Spike' one from him to go with my Spike!
Seriously, he gifted it to me. Great guy!
I have used them a bunch over the years. I have some two sided hones that I've used to go from bevel set to acceptable finish. I also find many of them to be pretty acceptable finishers. One drawer in the shave cave has my touch up hones that I rotate hones and stones through. Right now there is a Lakeside, an Apart along with a b/g escher, a mottled escher and a pierre la lune. So in my opinion many BHs can hang with a pretty decent crowd.
I agree. I used them strictly for a long time.
You have to dedicate time to try them over your tried and true stuff to find out.
Sortof like you have to enjoy honing! :hmmm:
It seems to me they were come-about with the advent of hard American steel?
Some are really fast.
Modine knows more than anyone about these.
Where IS Modine? :shrug:
Thanks for responding. It seems like there are a few gems among the barber hones out there.
That is great. I'm sure it was a nice surprise!
It is funny you mention that though.
I actually want to do one or two display cases like that eventually. Matching hone, razor, strop.
I don't have a genuine Swaty yet, but I do have one that actually says, "Swaty Three Line!"
Fernsler's Ruby hone.....Frictionite 00. Swaty 3-line,
Legendary stuff. Never held one.
The axe-man Norton, Who knows? I have some Americans that look just like them?
All are pricey! ;) Must be a reason?
I blame it on Barber-hone collectors! ;)
Oh! AND the Aussie Axe-Men!
I only have a couple. A three line Swaty and a Pike Koenig.
They both work real well.
Pete <:-}
I've had many and to be honest I never liked their edges, too coarse for me.
right now I have a three line swaty which I never use and an old kraftman hone which is a lot finer than the swaty but still not good enough.
IMO jnats and coticules are much better.
A seller on eBay recently posted a few NOS S.R. Droescher 3-line Swaty barber hones. The boxes look lovely:
Attachment 293447
Just one, a 3 line Swaty, don't need anything else.
I know..its a few months old. Had to make my contribution.
I've got four.
1. Ahconite.
2. Fast & Fine. For Barbers Use.
3. Champion
4. Franz Swatty, 3 line.
Attachment 302706
Attachment 302707
Attachment 302708
Attachment 302709
Their quite impressive in their own right, but the Swatty has been the most impressive. Very comparable to my B/G Escher, in comfort. Albeit a bit of leather.
Forgot all about this thread. I had gotten a few more hones, but to scrape together some money I sold them recently.
I doubt Barber Hones would do any better than my Thuri, so I'm trying not to have sellers remorse!
I still enjoy the history and aesthetics of the old barber hones. Hopefully I'll find some more down the road.
Ive got one.
Apart barber hone. Havent really put it to much use as i havent had many razors yet that need a touch up. Guess i should break it out and give it a go.
Attachment 302761
I've got about 6 at the moment. I like them well enough they're not going anywhere.
Favorite is a tough one though...I'm probably gonna have to go with the 3 line Swaty, since that's the one I actively use the most. The rest rarely see action, but that's not because they're inferior by any stretch of the imagination. The Swaty is just the one that lives in the bathroom.
The Swaty makes an edge about like my Norton 8K, and it does it pretty darn fast. The Raven and Celtes hones give my Shapton Kuromaku 12K a run for it's money. The 2 sided pike is a bit small for my liking, but the coarse side is nice for a quick small repair and the fine side feels about like the Swaty. My AHC 2 sided hone is about the same, just a little bit bigger thus easier to work with.
The glass hone is just fun to play with. It has a sort of textured/frosted honing surface meant to be used with soapstone pencil or a slate to make a slurry according to it's directions. The results I've gotten from it can mimic the slate stone, or if you do your final strokes on pure clean glass the edge gets extremely crisp and sharp - again giving my Kuromaku 12k a run for it's money.
So far I've not met one I don't like.
When I started with a straight 20 or so years ago barber hones were all the rage. I had quite a collection of them, probably 25 or so. I wound up giving them all away years ago except for 1 a swaty.
I have more than a few . :) I truly do not know how many I have but back when I was actively experimenting with them my favorite was a Frictionite 00 and an Apart barber hone.
Funny (and great) how threads like this never seem to die. Just last night I was talking myself in and out of buying a barber hone of some sort: on the one hand, hard to imagine they are going to do much any of my other finishers don't already, so performance is a poor justification; but, on the other hand, damn they seem like a cool piece of history. Ultimately, aside from a Swaty 3 line, I wouldn't even know where to begin or what to look for. Maybe some day if I happen across something wonderful.
I would argue that while the end result is similar, getting there is definitely different. Doing a quick touch up on your finishing home, most users here recommend somewhere between 10 and 20 strokes on an 8 x 3 inch (20.3 x 7.6 cm) hone. On a 5 x 2 inch (12.7 x 5.1 cm) Swaty, I'd suggest 5 strokes, test, then do 5 more if not to your liking. For being so small, and able to create a polish matching or exceeding 8K, they are surprisingly aggressive. There's not much one could do with a Norton 4/8 combination stone that couldn't also be done on a Swaty. But the main reason my swaty lives in the bathroom is between it's compact size and the speed at which it can touch up a razor, the thing is just hard to beat. I can pop the B. Hone out and give a blade 4-5 licks far faster than I can retrieve and strop a backup razor.
This is how I feel about barber hones, as well.
I recently picked up an SRD Comfort hone in great condition for a good price on the Bay. Have yet to use it.
Other than that, I have an Exide hone and a Carborundum 101 (I think). I've tried each of them once, although I keep telling myself that eventually I'll experiment with them.
I may give away the Carborundum....
I've had several 'Swaty' barber hones along with some others and they do work.
I'm one of those guys who if I were to drop and break say my Zulu, Escher, Coti etc and didn't have the funds to replace them I could live off of a Norton 8k edge for the rest of my life. With that said if I were to drop and break my Norton 4/8 I'd be eating bread and drinking water until I could save up to buy another one.
I'm expecting a 'Pike' Swaty in the mail today. I decided that since I can be out on a ride on my Harley for a couple of months in the summer that I needed something else besides my strop to make sure I could continue to enjoy shaves from a straight. At first I just took a DE, a brush and bowl with soap I prefer the straight shave experience much more.
Different Strokes For Different Folks.
Attachment 304268
That Pike Swaty landed safely today. While it was advertised as 'lapped' it wasn't up to what I would consider 'ready to use' so I used a pencil to make cross hatch marks and lapped it front and back on an Atoma 400. I will say that it was close but did need the work. I also rounded the edges which really needed the work (note; it seems that the Swaty hones did come with pretty square edges but I prefer a rounded edge--'Personal Preference').
After rinsing and drying well I warmed it and applied a heavy coat of petroleum jelly to it and wrapped it in aluminum foil and a rad and placed it back in a warm oven for about 10 minutes.
I have a razor that I refurbished for a friend's son that I need to test shave today but in a day or so I'll 'refresh' the edge on the razor I've decided to make my travel razor with the Swaty and see how it does.
Anyway here's a couple of pics. The first one is really close to the true color--the second one was in direct sunlight and that lightened up the color a lot.
Attachment 304270
Attachment 304271
Thanks for looking--:tu
From my limited experience I dislike the results from trying to lap a barber hone.
In my experience lapping ruins them.
This has been covered quite a few times in other threads, but it's a bad idea to just flatten a barber hone without bringing it up to a pretty good polish, like is often done with Arks used for razor finishing. The synthetic barber hones are composed of a fairly coarse grit compared to the finest synth finishers of today, but most were subjected to flattening and polishing at the factory to produce a smoother surface that provides more comfortable shaving edges.
Randy has posted about this previously also. (He has a considerable amount of documentation from a large barber hone maker - American Hone Co.). I like to run mine up to about 1000 grit then hit them lightly on a cotton polishing buff.
The other thing you have to watch out for is degradation of the binder. These hones are meant to be HARD. They shouldn't give up any appreciable/visible particles or grit during honing. If they do, they are not of much use for finishing a razor. I have a few like this, they can be used for little else but mid-range sharpening now.
By the time I heard that lapping barber hones was such a bad idea I had already lapped and re-hydrated everything l Have listed on page 5 of this thread. The only ones that suffered any ill effects were the two craftsmen dual sided homes. They were already getting chalky and were pretty much unusable before lapping so it didn't make things much worse. All of the others came out of the lapping, re-hydrating, burnishing process in great shape. YMMV.