Thread: What exactly is overhoning?

I know I'm asking for speculation, but what do you suppose causes the decline?

I'm not doubting that overhoning can happen... I just want to understand exactly what's happening when it happens, and just how much it takes to cause it.

At this point I have been unable to create a condition where excessive honing has caused observable deterioration of an edge.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

An old barber in the '80s, giving me a honing lesson, told me that if you go too far or use too much pressure , you can "lose the edge." So my postulate is that overhoning can be an issue while the edge may not be falling apart.

hey jimmy, i'll see your '80s and raise you August 17, 1998 - it depends on what your definition of 'falling apart' is

I've lost sharpness but don't recall looking at the edge. I would suspect micro chipping. To me that is falling apart. I may have used pressure when it happened. We're talking about honing years ago. It's easy to lose sharpness though when you're learning.

I often do 60 x 8k now without any over honing, so like stropping it may not be just a numbers game that leads to damage.

The experimenting continues...

For some reason the microscope pictures didn't save (or at least not where I expected them to, and aren't able to be found by the search function).

My test tonight was to see what I could do with pressure on a high grit stone. The first picture below was after everything was done, including stropping. The only picture prior to that which was notable was after doing 100 laps with heavy pressure on the 12k. I did my best to simulate what that looked like, it is the second picture below. There was a white line visible at the edge. I am not certain if that was lighting artifact or if I developed a microburr. I could not feel the burr if it was present. After stropping (as the first picture shows) that artifact was gone, so I am assuming that I did develop a microburr with high pressure and high laps.
I will post a picture later of the edge post-shave. I am curious if I had a burr that straightened with stropping and the edge might break down while shaving...

The edge after stropping looks pretty good to me, but I don't use microscopes much, so I am open to commentary. The final picture is a 16th inch graduation on a ruler to give an idea of scale... The microscope is claimed to be 150x, but I have no idea if it is or not.

Originally Posted by HNSB

I know I'm asking for speculation, but what do you suppose causes the decline?

I'm not doubting that overhoning can happen... I just want to understand exactly what's happening when it happens, and just how much it takes to cause it.

At this point I have been unable to create a condition where excessive honing has caused observable deterioration of an edge.

I'm no expert but in my mind's eye I see a point where the two planes meet perfectly. At that point I'm thinking it doesn't get any better than that. Since we can't see that precise point, even with magnification, going beyond it would, IMO, be the definition of overhoning.

When I first came around to SRP there was a school of thought by some that until you polished out every scratch from the previous stone you weren't done with the grit you were on.

Buying shave ready razors from noted honemeisters , that were truly shave ready, I noted under magnification, that there was plenty of scratch pattern on many of them. This led me to ignore the scratch pattern removal and go with TPT, popping arm hair and the like to ascertain sharpness while honing.

The only time I have caused deterioration, that I can recall, is taking ebay specials with edges that looked like a hacksaw blade to a 1200 DMT and using circles and back and forth strokes cleaned it up.

Got rid of the micro chips but left the so called burr with a rough edge. I've done that more than once and then took it to a 1K waterstone to begin cleaning it up. I've never done it on a high grit stone that I can remember.

Looks like a burr to me.

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

When I first came around to SRP there was a school of thought by some that until you polished out every scratch from the previous stone you weren't done with the grit you were on.

I will probably start thinking of this as the "6/8 Wedge Paradox". We had several thousand people, just like today, asking "How much time do you spend on each stone?" "How many strokes?" Etc. Despite efforts to explain the details of a progression, and the existence of the pyramid method negating the whole concern, the worry and questions continued . . . ad nauseum. Eventually, you have to give people a finite answer, even when you know something shouldn't be explicitely defined.

Today, a few poor souls get asked "What is the best starter razor?" and despite providing thousands of data points people would buy crap on Ebay or Pakastani steel in search of the right blade. In the end, just giving up and saying "Buy a 6/8 Wedge", gives people an answer.

Maybe the point of "just remove all the scratches" was just a way to get people to spend enough time on each grit, do something effective, and stop asking questions.

Surely you figured out pretty quickly that it's impossible to remove scratches.