Thread: Video of me honing, please critique

Your technique looks fine to me as for circles you should wath lin how he does circles that may help you on that. I realy like holding just like you when honing it feels more natural to me but if i was doing circles i would do them with the naniwa on a table so its more stable.

Hey Karl. Your first strokes were straight across the hone and then on the second group more of an x stroke. I do the x stroke and try to make them uniform each way. I also prefer honing on a stable surface rather than holding the hone in the opposite hand. Not better necessarily just what I do. I also tend to hone more slowly.

This is true Gary- honing with circles on a table is more stable- and I do. I can also use both hands that way. I'll try and set up the webcam in a way that I can demo that better.

Jimmy- The Nani is about 1.5" shorter, and .75" wider. That kind of optically exaggerates the difference. But yes. I agree with you, I need to work on consistency.

The flips are okay though?

Edit: I went and "felt" my way through it slowly- its also kind of I think a bad habit- the nani is wide enough that I don't really pay much attention to the x. Thanks for catching that!

You mention that your water has a drop of dish detergent in it. I'm new to honing so I don't know, but is that better than plain water or is it recommended for the stone you are using. So far all I have is a Chinese 12K and only tried it once. However, I had good success by bread knifing to straighten the edge and then lots of passes (actually I counted and did 1,000 strokes on each side) and checked the edge under the microscope and the edge was straight and uniform. The few shaves I've had since then have been much more comfortable.

Lol a lot of people would shoot you for doing that but hey whatever works. The dish soap doesn't help hone- what it does is break the water tension. If you look, when I'm flashing the stone around, the water is spread evenly every where, not pooled up. Thats what the dish soap does. I dunno. Works either way. Works better with dish soap than without. You can use a little shaving lather too.

Looks very good in my opinion.
I just uploaded a few seconds of my honing stroke to Youtube and posted it here, to help out an honing rookie. Would I have seen your video before that, I would have just linked to yours. Not much difference!

Only one real thing, Jimmy said it, I would pay more attention to doing a more pronounced X, symmetrical withing reason.

I think you might use a whisper more pressure on the stroke part that goes towards you. Within short time, you'll manage to relax that index finger more.

Anything else looks just great. I'm slightly jealous at that tape.

Bart.

Tips and pointers:

Be very careful on what stones you put soap on I would never put it on Norton's, Naniwa's, or especially Shapton's...
I do use it on Naturals and DMT's

Your asking for tips and pointers but yer honing as fast as Bart, Slow Down...Honing is way more about accuracy then even stropping. I wouldn't hold a stone in my hand until you have been doing this so long that you are giving this advice instead of asking for it... Hmmmm I still don't hold a stone designed for tables.. 8x3's on the table, 2x5 in the hand, if the hone is wobbling like yours is while you hone, I would seriously put it on the table...

Yer movement and comfort with moving the razor across the stone is looking good...


PS: Name of medical tape????????????????????

The reason I'm fast/comfortable (I'm not justifying it, I'll take your advice) is that I picked up a worthless razor and practiced on a hunk of slate I lapped lol.
Also, why would you not use soap on your synthetics? It's seemed good so far... I mean I've only honed/rehoned like, 10 razors maybe? but it doesn't seem to hurt the stone. And its like, literally nothing. Like, I take a gallon of distilled water (can be bought) and literally a drip or two of dish soap, shake it up, and put it in the closet til I need it. I'm sure there's a good reason, I just wanna know why.
lol
I dunno the tape brand. I go to the trainer and am like I need tape so they're like here you go.... it says Johnson and Johnson made in Brazil on the inside of the roll.

Also, I think I made it clear that it was uncomfortable holding the hone like that, and I know it wobbles- my normal posture is to rest my hand and one edge of the hone on my thigh and basically do the inverse of stropping.