Originally Posted by
khaos
I learned two methods of honing from two people and I can't tell a difference in the edge. One was teh x-method, from Holli4Pirating,from and the other was teh circles method from JoeD. The circles method is you time your self doing small circles, say, one minute, on one side, then flip and do a minute on teh other side. I think this is similar to the back and forth method. You can do circles at every level on every hone apparently. Both those razors were sharpened by me, under supervision, and they came out fine despite my inexpertise. So I think, provided your blade makes good contact, you should in theory be fine. But as others say, the x is probably added insurace.