Thread: Newbie Question: Honing NOS razors

I have a few questions about honing new razors. I have a couple NOS razors that I want to get shave ready. They are sharp enough to cleanly slice hairs off my arm, but are not quite sharp enough to shave my face. The only thing is I am pretty new to straight shaving and very new to honing. I purchased a barber's hone in order to maintain my professionally honed razors. I have only needed to use it once so far, to clean up the edge of a razor that got a mysterious nick in the blade that I didn't notice until it made a couple deep scratches in my new strop. It worked very well for that and seemed to take the blade back to its original edge. Anyways, I tried the barber's hones on the NOS razors, but the edge didn't seem to take the blade to the level of sharpness of my other, professionally honed razors. Is the problem likely my technique or are more stones necessary to make the blades "shave ready?" What would you guys recommend to someone who just wants to be able to make factory blades ready to shave?

A Norton 4k / 8k

Or any medium / high grit combination of stones

Shapton 4k and 8k

Naniwa 3k/8k or 5k / 8k

The natural way would be a Yellow Coticule and a prodigious use of slurry

There are others too but those are my recommendations it is also my advice not to add anything higher until you are shaving comfortably off of one of these 8k level stones...

At the stage of the game you're at I would recommend you go to the SRP Wiki honing tutorials here and give them a once over. Check out the honing videos by Lynn and by heavydutysg135 here. Get some ebay or flea market specials to practice on with which ever water stones you decide to buy. Once you feel confident in your honing then take a shot at your new razors. That is the way I approached it and it worked well for me.

The factories hone the razors with the spine off the hone, so as not to damage the spine. If you try to hone them in this state then your hone won't actually touch the edge, so it's not surprising that you're not seeing results. If you stretch a strip of electrical tape down the spine of the razor, wrapped around to cover each side of the blade, then this should lift the spine enough that your barber hone will hone the edge of the razor. If this doesn't do it then try two layers of tape. If that doesn't do it then you'll need a coarser hone to cut a new bevel.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

A Norton 4k / 8k

Or any medium / high grit combination of stones

Shapton 4k and 8k

Naniwa 3k/8k or 5k / 8k

The natural way would be a Yellow Coticule and a prodigious use of slurry

There are others too but those are my recommendations it is also my advice not to add anything higher until you are shaving comfortably off of one of these 8k level stones...

Thanks for the advice. After finishing on the 4K/8K would it be helpful to do any passes on the barber's hone, or should I just strop it and shave?

Depends on the barber hone IMO. When all I had was a Norton set and a Swaty I would sharpen on the Norton 4/8 and finish on the Swaty with water. If the barber hone is a good one you could do that.

Now I prefer to test shave off of the 8k before I go any further with polishing the edge but that is just my thing to make sure I delivered the goods with the 4/8.