Thread: Visit with my barber

Had an interesting experience this morning. My barber called me last night
and said "stop by the shop tomorrow morning, I've got something to show you". You have to know Baxter to appreciate him, he's been my barber for 20+ years easily and is very colorful, outspoken, and real working cowboy who runs cattle on what is left of the old family ranch. Onery is an understatement. He has been helping me along a bit as I have gotten into straight razor shaving, bringing in his collection of old razors and a few strops. Still has a couple of strops hanging off the barber chair.
I walk in the front door and he says I'm going to tell you how to keep that razor sharp and over on the bench behind the chair he has a couple of hones, gray, about 2" x 4". He says this is all you need along with a good strop. He then proceeds to get one of his old razors out and shows me the thumb nail test telling me what I should be feeling in terms of drag. Then he starts to hone the razor but does it as if he is stropping it with the spine first, blade following in an X pattern. I said I thought honing was the opposite action of stropping and he said why would you want to do that? This will take care of it along with your strop. If you want some wet on it
put some shave cream on it. Then he opens a drawer and pulls out an old
small brown box and takes out a brand new hone, like his old one, and hands it to me and says here you are good to go now. Just remember what I showed you and how to test it on your thumb. The stone he says is carborundum (sp?).
I had a great morning..............