Thread: Barbers hone observations

I have recently been listening to the Hal Wilson advice on barber hones.
I bought three hones.
A Shumate hone which is a slate blue/grey in colour.
An Austrian Franz Swaty which is brown in colour.
An Itsapeech which is olive creamy green in colour.
All these hone were unused and so I chose to use water. I put a liquid soap on the hone ( like fairy liquid, the wife has some in a pump action bottle by the sink) as I find the same as with lather it makes the final finish more polished, it acts as a vacuum to suck the blade onto the hone and it makes the honing action a lot smoother.I honed each stone until I colud see grey filings in the clear soapand then lightened the already gentle pressure for two more cycles.
The Shumate is the least smooth stone and sets a good V on the blade.
The Swaty will complete the task putting a mirror finish.
The Itsapeech just adds a bit more shine like a leather strop will do.
I found I had to wash and run a blade over the Shumate and the Itsapeech to remove surface factory grit before showing these stones to my razor.
My razor is now sharp enough to shave with. Which for a novice like me is a miracle Thank you all for your posting without which I would not have made such successful progress.

Congratulations on your success! The classic barber hones DO! work as you have just shown.
Hal is a really good guy who has fiddled with the barber hones just a bit.

Did you start off with a new razor or ? Did you use water first and then use soap as the second step?

Glad you made it,

Randy,

I was just lucky.
The razor was a pretty new but very dull DOVO stainless steel blade.
I first tried the Swaty dry, then with water, then with lather and then liquid soap. Each change got the blade to a better mirror finish. You can feel it when your honing and can see it if you look at the edge through a 10x magnifier. In the daylight that is.
The Itsapeech polishes the blade up one more level.
This said, the blade was still not working. Shiny but not sharp.

It was only when I got the rougher Shumate hone that things started to work for me. Clearly this hone was not polishing but cutting a V shape on the edge.
Again you can see under a little magnification. The V is clear and the edges are not shiny but lined by the grit from the hone.

The process that worked for me was using all three stones all water wet stones (ie hold hone under tap for a couple of seconds) and all with a couple of pumps of liquid soap on the hone surface. I put the hone on a towel on the kitchen worktop. The honing process removes any excess soap and you can guide the blade easily with your finger tips because the soap sucks the blade down on the hone. You can feel what's happening and see the grey filings from the blade in the soap.
If I had not cut the V with the wet/soaped hone, I would have tried the same hone dry. If this had not worked I would have bought a new stone. Probably a 1000 grit japanese water stone.

I'd guess the hones measure up as follows:

Dry Wet Lather L.Soap Oil
Shumate 4000 4500 5000 6000 ?

Austrian Swaty 6500 + ++ 8000 ?

Itsapeech ? ? ? 10000 ?

This is ofcourse just a gut feeling. One thing is for sure, the barber hones are all different and each one is very flexible within a range. The Austrian swaty cuts the quickest. Honing is certainly not a science but a skill to be learnt and mastered. I'm learning, but I have had one success and feel sure I can repeat it.

Thanks for the response! It will help others who need info on the use of the classic barber hones. I do like the barber hones, small, effective, inexpensive, and a cool piece of history.
I have my grandfathers Little Fricionite 00 with the rubbing stone and instructions.
That one I will keep forever.

Best of luck,

Randy you mentioned a 'Frictionite ' fantastic , Tilly sent me one to try as a replacement for the lithide, I've still to get back to her on my thoughts of it - it laps up a treat and is a fantstic finishing hone - I'm delighted with it ..

Why replace a Lithide? She's out of stock? Anyways, I got my second Lithide recently, but don't have time to try and lap it...

nenad

Hey Nenad , why replace it ..... I sort of made a mess of lapping the Lithide I'm blaming myself anyway so when I mentioned to Tilly she included the frictionite one with my premier -- she thinks the lithides are made from the frictionite ones - I'm going to have another go at lapping the lithide again to see if i can better results ...

ps... your addition to the Lemmings thread was truely a fantatic read - I logged in on Saturday evening using my cell phone abd couldn't wait until Monday to read the responses .

thanks for sharing that with us