Thread: honing every shave?

I'm wondering if you have a coticule and you would use it with water to hone your razor before every shave to get a nice edge, would that remove much metal in the long run? (or how about weekly or monthly that seems like a decent amount of time to go between hone jobs)
it seems like a very slow cutter and only merely polishes your edge so I was wondering about this, just maybe 10 strokes or smth, at least not an exuberant amount of strokes
seems like ppl used the hone more in the old days, more than let's say only twice a year to touch up, so I'm curious about maybe honing more often

any input, ideas, experience, thoughts welcome

There's no need to hone before every shave.


....


until you develop HAD and have to test a new hone before every shave.

Originally Posted by joshDHM

it seems like a very slow cutter and only merely polishes your edge

When used with slurry the cutting power is increased. Have you been to Bart's website here ? There is lots of info on various methods of honing with a coticule. Great stuff IME. As the previous posters have said, if it is properly honed to begin with you should get many shaves with it before any touch up is necessary.

Here is my own method of keeping my razor in prime condition for shaving.

Once the razor is honed and made shave ready, I shave with it and give it 50 laps on my leather strop before its next use.

Since my beard is quite rough, after about 6 shaves, I find the strop doesn't bring the razor back to that keen edge I like. So I take my Hard Balsa Strop, you could also use a barbers hone, and give the razor 6 to 10 very light laps. Then I strop it on leather 50 laps.

Start all over again until the Hard Balsa Strop or Barbers Hone doesn't bring the blade back to life again. Then I visit my finishing hone. In your case, the Coti is perfect for this. There is absolutly no way you could over hone the razor, and depending on the characteristics of the stone you should be able to bring the edge back with between 50 and 150 laps on clear water only. Then strop on leather and start the process all over again.

This method keeps my edges going for a long time and so shuld yours.

Ray

Originally Posted by rayman

Since my beard is quite rough, after about 6 shaves, I find the strop doesn't bring the razor back to that keen edge I like. So I take my Hard Balsa Strop, you could also use a barbers hone, and give the razor 6 to 10 very light laps. Then I strop it on leather 50 laps.

^ This is almost identical to my maintenance routine. I hardly ever have a razor re-honed. Every six to eight weeks, I touch up all my blades on a small barber's hone, which only takes a couple of minutes (I just do five or six full passes). Rotating six razors, I figure I'm getting eight to ten full shaves between touch-ups.

My guess is that with a finishing stone like the coticule, you'd essentially be performing similar maintenance. With just a few touch-up passes, I don't think it would be wearing down too much metal at all...

Originally Posted by joshDHM

I'm wondering if you have a coticule and you would use it with water to hone your razor before every shave to get a nice edge,
....

Lots of good posts already.
In my mind this would be harder on the Coticule than
on the razor. And it should simply be unnecessary.

We are all different so if you are curious
try it both ways.... Should take about six months
then report back what you learned.

Honing each time you shave is overkill, and would achieve nothing on a correctly honed razor.

With certain of my hollow ground razors I have found that they improve 2 or 3 shaves after they have been honed. Perhaps its just me.

Bottom line - if you are competent at honing, then doing it each time you shave is pointless for the both you and the razor, not to mention the hone.

Maybe not if you had no strop!

Originally Posted by MrDavid

^ This is almost identical to my maintenance routine. I hardly ever have a razor re-honed. Every six to eight weeks, I touch up all my blades on a small barber's hone, which only takes a couple of minutes (I just do five or six full passes). Rotating six razors, I figure I'm getting eight to ten full shaves between touch-ups.

My guess is that with a finishing stone like the coticule, you'd essentially be performing similar maintenance. With just a few touch-up passes, I don't think it would be wearing down too much metal at all...

Good call! If the razor has been honed correctly to begin with, all you'll ever need is a quality barbers hone. Although the coticle can be used as a finisher not all coticles are the same being a natural product, this could also be the problem if the coticle is not a good finisher. BTW Mr D: Hows the Shumate?