Some questions I haven't seen answered yet

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Originally Posted by daflorc

Hey, that magic marker thing sounds like a good idea to better see the edge under a loupe.

And thanks, dnullify, for your insight, and writing all that on your phone–wow!

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Ive found that assessing an edge with razors really is only useful to a point. The advantage of the BBW is that it won't remove all that much more material than necessary by starting from scratch regardless of the condition of your edge (to a limit. I'm not talking about rusted or chipped blades).
Starting from scratch will take the guessing out of honing, which is important. That way you know you have a solid shaveable edge, so that you can focus on your technique and Stropping. It takes something out of the equation.

And holy heck, that's one massive rock! 10x3? Damn. Well, I guess you're not hand- holding your hone huh?

Yes I can't wait till it comes in the mail. I bought a kitayama finishing stone, which I've since discovered isn't what I need to reset the bevel on my new dovo. After much research, I started drooling over those belgian blues, and since they're supposedly 4,000 grit I justified buying it because I thought it would do the bevel-setting job that I require, and I could finish up on the kitayama. I had to buy the 10x3" stone because it was only $5 more than the 8x3 stone, and when I'm already paying around $90 bucks, what's $5 more, right?

I got it from this site:
bestsharpeningstones.com

Ah. Hopefully you'll get a slurry stone with it.

The BBW will do much more than a 4k would, and does not behave like a 4k at all. .
I would suggest you stick with just the BBW at first, as it yields an edge with similar "magical" properties a s a coticule. That is, even a razor not as keen as it could be may tug, but won't burn or cut nearly as much as another.
If you follow it with an arificial you'll loose this quality.

In my opinion, this qualityis rather valuable to a beginner shaver, although it may not be the keenest edge possible. I don't have nearly as much experience as a lot of others around here, but it is based on my experience thus far that I advise.

Thanks, I'll definitely try working with the BB only, although secretly I'm hoping that the razor will require the finishing touches of the kitayama I just bought, otherwise that's $50 bucks (a $30 amazon discount from the normal $80) I just wasted on that kitayama. Do you have one of these? Why would it reduce the quality of the edge? I stupidly thought I could "touch up" my "shave ready" dovo with the kitayama, but after 300-400 rounds, I realized that the kitayama is so fine and took off such a miniscule amount of metal, that it would take days to reset the bevel, if ever. It puts a real nice finish on the bevel though. Is there any use for it at all, or should I sell it and keep my big belgian blue?

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Originally Posted by daflorc

Thanks, I'll definitely try working with the BB only, although secretly I'm hoping that the razor will require the finishing touches of the kitayama I just bought, otherwise that's $50 bucks (a $30 amazon discount from the normal $80) I just wasted on that kitayama. Do you have one of these? Why would it reduce the quality of the edge? I stupidly thought I could "touch up" my "shave ready" dovo with the kitayama, but after 300-400 rounds, I realized that the kitayama is so fine and took off such a miniscule amount of metal, that it would take days to reset the bevel, if ever. It puts a real nice finish on the bevel though. Is there any use for it at all, or should I sell it and keep my big belgian blue?

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It wont lower the quality of the edge, but remove the "coticule quality" that the BBW leaves. I believe the sentence more often used to describe this quality is "it cuts hair, not skin". I can attest to this. It is forgiving of lacking technique, won't cause bleeders or bad razor burn as readily as a very keen artificial edge might. I've taken my finest BBW edge, and then finished on a Spyderco UF. Pretty damn sharp, but it was not remotely forgiving of pressure, angle, and grain. I reverted back to the BBW edge.

Id hold on to the finishing stone, for future experiments, especially once you've got more than 30 shaves under your belt.

Agree it is not rocket sience, but I started using straight razor in 2007 and still learning. So my experience is that it takes a while, especially to get a grip of honing.

Good luck and welcome to the world of SR

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Originally Posted by dnullify

Get yourself a good but cheap strop with a canvas side.

I started honing in ernest with a BBW. You can get a perfectly shaveable edge off of it, but it will take you a week or so of experimenting.
Visit coticule.be for more info on Belgian homes.

Firstly, I suggest you pick up an unremarkable vintage razor on eBay for ~$15. Learning to use Belgian hones can take practice, which will put hone wear on your nice dovo.
You can definitely get a dovo factory edge to shave ready on a BBW, I've done it. I can't speak specifically about your stone, or what you've done to it since so the procedure I'm going to give you will be assuming that the edge is toast. Again, I advise you wait until you have a razor to learn on before trying this.

BBW:

Note: all is assuming you have a slurry stone. Take your time, and don't get careless with movements. You can slip and chip your razor pretty easily. It is a long process at first, and later honing sessions probably won't require as much work. This is the best I can do without getting too technical or subjective.

1) Bevel "setting"
You're not going to get as precise a bevel off a BBW as you would a 1k stone. That being said, you can get a serviceable edge.
Start with a paste like slurry. When creating slurry, start with very little water, so that you don't create more slurry than necessary. It is only the amount directly under the edge that does the work, any more is Easters and hinders dilution.

-Sets of 40 halfstrokes per side. Only add water to maintain slurry thickness, try not to dilute.
Test: after 4 sets, wipe the blade and strop the edge clean on your forearm (carefully), or jeans. Then try the "arm hair test" (AHT).

--> if you can cut arm hairs cleanly then proceed to next step
--> if you can not, do 1 more set of 50 halfstrokes and check again
=> repeate until it passes AHT

2) Refinement
this step assumes you are passing the AHT follow closely and you should get this step right.

Dilute the paste like slurry to about 50% thickness of before. If you end up with too much let some run off the stone as you hone.

-sets of 40 halfstrokes per side
-4 sets.
Wipe blade, clean edge on forearm and HHT with a thick hair. You should be getting a HHT2 "violin" or better. If not, whatever move on to the next step anyway.

3) further refinement
Dilute slurry to 50% of previous step.

- x-strokes
-100-120 x-strokes with very light pressure. Take this step slow and try not to slip up and scrape the edge on the edges of the stone.

Test: (optional) HHT. Should be at a HHT3 or better. If not more x-strokes. It's important to clean the edge or you're not going toget a good test result.

4) Finishing
Rinse the blade and stone thoroughly.

Slurry: Misty - 1-3 swipes of the slurry stone. You should barely see any slurry.

-100 x-strokes with as little pressure as possible. The BBW is forgiving, so no need to be anal about pressure.

Test: HHT. Should be a solid HHT3, if not a 4.

5) Stropping
If you have a confident Stropping technique, do 60 canvas then 60 leather. As little pressure as possible, and take it slow. You can easily kill all the work you've done to get to this point.







This is the procedure that I have come up with after much experimenting, as well as with the help of dr. Ralfson, Bart, and many others. I'm fairly confident that you will have a shave ready edge on your razor the quickest if you follow it, and you will only improve with time.

Hopefully I'm not being redundant in this post, I'm typing all this up on my phone and haven't read every post in this thread yet.

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OK without trying to be disrespectful here "Are you kidding"

Have you counted the number of stokes you just told a beginner to do learning to hone???
Obviously not...

It didn't occur to you that maybe this wasn't the best system to "help" a beginner with...

Perhaps you should maybe take into consideration that every single time a beginner flips the razor it creates a risk to messing up the edge and the more laps they do they less likely they are to achieve a goal...

Please consider what you write, before posting any "Honing Advice" on SRP...

Any other discussion will be by PM...

That stroke count is necessary to get a dull ebay special to shave-ready. Until the OP can assess the edge at various stages of honing, he will likely strop and shave test - be dissatisfied, and go back to scratch anyway. this has been my experience.

That being said, i'd like to ammend my post by saying that all stroke counts are based on my 150x50mm BBW, most of my halfstrokes being only 2-3" long. a 10" long stone is something i don't know how to calculate for, nevermind natural variation in honing properties of BBW (like coticules).

as i stated above I strongly suggest buying a vintage razor on ebay to learn with, as you will very likely fudge up the edge often and have to start over, before you've got accurate muscle memory and experience.

Had i seen a thread before the OP had ordered a BBW, i probably would have suggested a much smaller coticule, or perhaps a Norton 4k/8k and left it at that. That was not the case, and thus i was simply providing a procedure that would work with what he has without needing to purchase yet more.
I too started with a Dovo, a BQ with a factory edge. i had the same mentality, thinking i could simply touch up an edge that seemed to be shaving somewhat well before (not having had any other experience), i purchased a finishing stone (UF). It did work for me, only after CrOx. Barely shave-ready and a harsh and unpleasant edge. I then ended up with a BBW, but for different reasons (the challenge, and my hones were gone for CS).

please feel free to provide your own advice, i don't think anyone will hold it against you.

its nice you vets watch each others posts to make sure advice given is articulated well and not misinterpreted by a newbee who may not have common sense or know any better.

btw, I bought such a large stone because a 3 inch wide stone seems to make it much easier to keep the edge flat on the stone, and I can just set the razor on it and basically push it forward from behind. 10 inches long reduces the number of strokes I have to take for the same effect. Is it not a good thing to use this method? It seems to take alot of the guesswork out of technique.

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Originally Posted by daflorc

its nice you vets watch each others posts to make sure advice given is articulated well and not misinterpreted by a newbee who may not have common sense or know any better.

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In my opinion a month of honing doesn't a vet make :)

The size of the hone isn't very important as far as the number of strokes goes, it is the condition of the edge that should be the guiding factor. And even then as I posted earlier there's quite a big variation between different BBW hones. I had one big and wide BBW that you'd need hundreds of strokes to do even the miniscule of sharpening.

Anyways, with the tools you have you've got your job already cut for you, but I will still recommend you use as a guidance not a number of strokes but how sharp the edge is. Yes, you don't quite know what to expect, but you should be able to judge relative sharpness, i.e. is it sharper, is it duller, or is it the same. The common ways to do this is how it cuts body hair (arms and others once you run out of armhair) and how it feels on a wet thumbpad. The thumbnail test is not for the edge you already have, using it will just deteriorate it further.

The best of course is if you can find somebody near you to help you in person.

Other than that your steps are:
(1) ensure there is no double bevel (use the marker test - loupe, strong light and your kitayama w/o slurry)
set a good bevel - start with thick slurry on the bbw, but not mud, circular or back and forth honing with light pressure (i.e. not ultralight strokes because those will take you thousands of strokes to make any progress), but no need to bear on the razor, the pressure should be say 2-3 times the weight of the razor. The important part is to keep the pressure uniform and consistent and equal number of strokes/circles on both sides (switch every 30). You should do this until the razor is shaving body hair at the skin level.
(2) increase the sharpness of the razor - start by doing light x-pattern strokes without pressure, check every 20 strokes the razor should become sharper than in the previous step
(3) dilute the slurry and keep doing the same strokes and checking how the razor is getting sharper. As long as it is becoming sharper keep diluting the slurry, you should be able to cut hair above skin level. Progress like this until the slurry is just water. That's more or less the limit you can get on your BBW (you can do a little better but getting to this point is challenging enough).