Thread: Honing and STUCK on a plateau!!

I do have a cheap microscope, about $9.00 I think? I have used a magic marker to confirm my strokes, it does help. And I do think that less is more if and when that works, I was useing more strokes to try and get better results. I will go back to the 1K after joining the edge[puposely dulling it] and do the bevel over from the start. With a felt tip marker to confirm the eveness of my strokes. I"m sorry about the size of my text, Its my complete lack of computer savy that helps make most of my attempts with one at least a near failure!!! Hope this text works out better.
Thank you Lynn A. and everone again, in spite of my ever steepening learning curve I will take all your advice and try to work it in to a usable paridigm[and maybe a sharp razor also, maybe]

tinkersd!

How many razors have you got ? Have you got one that was honed professionally ? If not I would send one to Lynn or one of the other honmiesters and that will give you one to shave with and more importantly something to go by when you are honing your others. If you only have the one I would still suggest sending it out. Pick another one or two up to practice with. Something used but of good quality. Also if I were you I wouldn't purposely dull the edge with that jointing technique unless I was a lot further along in learning how to hone than you are at present.Look at the edge with you microscope and read this here. Note what the text says the bevel should look like. If it looks like that go on with the pyramids.

I do have a few str8's that shave very well includeing a D.Peres that I re-pined that I honed to what I find to be a nice little shaver. I got spoiled because of the first two I honed went a little to well. I compare my shaves to the great shave I always got from my DE adjustable with a new mercur blade and a nice face prep. I have used a new DE blade to compare my TPT and TNT test to AND I have a very 'Electric' I bought from e-bay seller, dbullfrog that came shave ready and was so nice a shave out of the box I wouldn't think of touching it to a stone for quite some time, it shaves GREAT!! Sorry about all the stupid question, I never accept my not being able to do something I set my mind to. I do take advice well and will try all sensible honing models you good fellows have given me. I do apreciate more than I can write here.
Have a Great G'day and a BBS to all!!

tinkersd of SRP!!
Post Scriptum : Does any one know what happened to member 'karacoup' who used to sell red and green paste in the classified section?? I think his name was 'Valentin'?? Just wondering.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

To start with you might take some black magic marker and apply it to the edge. Do a few strokes and see if with a normal x stroke the marker is uniformly removed from the edge. If it is then you are alright with that stroke. If not you will have to use a stroke that does remove the marker and stick with that stroke throughout the process.

+1 on the magic marker test. I was honing away and away and away, not making progress, then I applied the marker test and it showed me what I needed to adjust to get the full blade to respond correctly (which ended up being a rolling x-pattern on one of my razors-- see the wiki if you want more info on that).


-Chief

tinkersd - I had the opportunity to sample the red bar from valentin, and found it to be no different than many red rouge bars available as "jewelers rouge". It was, however, a good quality jewelers rouge. The green bar is undoubtedly chromium oxide, and I believe Chris L sells it for four bucks a packet, which should last you quite a while. Many top honemeisters finish on chromium oxide which yields an incredibly smooth edge when used properly.

Don't buy a chromium oxide bar due to the fact that they are full of other junk that's not chromium oxide. I used to have a bar of it and wasn't satisfied with the results. After a little digging, I posted my findings here:

http://straightrazorpalace.com/basic-honing/28088-consumer-alert-chromium-oxide-bars-not.html