I'm wondering, given the pyramid method et all, about the relational issue between honing passes and grit size. I was noting the other night that I wasn't sure how many passes to make on .5 pasted strop. I found that 30 was about right. This morning, rising out of bed, it occured to me that a stair step approach to honing should yield a sort of logarithmic scale of honing. I.E. if 1 pass on a 4,000, and 3 passes on an 8,000 are correct then a logarithmic formula might exist for estimated grits on barber hones. I.E. a 10,000 grit hone requires then 5 passes to accomplish its job (the removal of the 8,000 grit scratches), where as you could "theoretically" figure out:

1. The number of passes that should be used for .5 pasted strop and the number of passes for .25 pasted strop (maybe double). I wonder if you could then determine the number of .25 pasted passes to hone an Ebay razor?
OK so it would take a math genius to figure out that it takes 25,000 passes, but a more applicable understanding would be:

1. Given 1 on 4,000 and 3 on 8,000 it should on average take 5? on 10,000 and 25? on .5 pasted strop to hone a razor since each progressive hone is removing the grit lines from each successive hone. Whereas as long as the 4,000 does its initial job (pyriamiding if you fail) then from there it should be possible to develop a mathmatical scale for various grits, at least in estimated value of the number of passes.

What do you guys think? I would be interested in an applicative discussion instead of mathmatical one but. . . how many passes do you guys typically use to hone a razor for each grit? I typically do this:

1/4,000
4/8,000
6/10000
30/50000

I often pyramid back to 1/4000 more than once until I'm sure its right before climbing up grits.

I can imagine someone might only do 4 passes of every grit all the way up to shaving nirvana.

What kind of pattern do the rest of you typically use? I'm wondering if we all just naturally do the same thing or if we do a great variety.