May I over-analyze honing?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been using the Half-X honing pattern because I didn’t think there would be any difference between it and the Full-X. And now, after reading the Treatise on sharpening mentioned in another post, I don’t think either pattern is sufficient. First, I’ll explain why then discuss the new pattern, the 4-X.

Let's establish some terminology:

Let's assume conventional honing is used, NOT back-honing.

If the blade is drawn across the hone from heel to toe, the scratches will start at the edge and slant forward toward the toe - let's call this toe-leaning.

If the blade is drawn from across the hone from toe to heel, the scratches will start at the edge and slant backward toward the heel - let's call this heel-leaning.

Considering each side of the blade separately, since we may shave with the heel leading or the toe leading or anywhere in between, I don't see what difference it would make if the scratches are toe-leaning or heel-leaning.

I think the only significant difference between the Full-X and Half-X must be at the edge itself in how the scratches come together at the edge.

In the Full-X, the scratches on both sides will be toe-leaning and look like this:

(toe-leaning)
////////////////////////////////////////////////////// toe of blade
-------------------------------------------------------edge
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\
(toe-leaning)


In the Half-X, the scratches will approach the edge from opposite directions and look like this:

(toe-leaning)
////////////////////////////////////////////////////// toe of blade
------------------------------------------------------edge
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
(heel-leaning)

The question is, do either of these patterns produce an optimum edge?


The treatise on sharpening mentioned in another post discusses a 4-stroke X pattern, consisting of both toe-to-heel and heel-to-toe strokes on both sides of the blade, resulting in this:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX toe of blade
---------------------------------------------------------edge
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


This stroke eliminates any grooves by honing each side in both directions and will result in the most uniform and smoothest edge.

I’m going re-hone one of my shavers with the 4-X, using my usual 8000 waterstone, coticule, .5 pasted strop and .25 pasted strop, and try it tomorrow. I’ll post the results.

Tom

I've heard of guys who use no x-pattern whatsoever. They use a simple back-and-forth stroke. I hope others weigh in on this too but regardless of the x-pattern or straight stroke, the bevel/edge will still be created.

Maybe someone like Alan could weigh in about the striations - he's done a lot of research about that topic (it always causes controversy).

-Rob

I'm one of those guys who do not use the x pattern. In reality if you hone straight with the heel leading slightly the result will be the same and it works just fine for me. I guess you could use the opposite with the toe leading, I haven't tried it but it would just reverse the striations. I don't know if that pattern would have any deleterious effect on the bevel or not. Thats a question for Lynn or one of the real Honemeisters here.

It's an interesting experiment you're conducting. I remember reading that one of the regulars (urleebird?) hones with an alternating pattern that would be somewhat like the 4-X pattern. You hone one direction, and as you change grits you go the other direction until the scratches are polished out, then reverse directions and hone until the scratches are polished out, etc.

I think its worth a try and see what you get. If your using too low a grit as a finishing stone or too much pressure on the finishing laps you'll likely get a better edge.

I think you should read the 1961 barbers manual in the help files if you haven't all ready.

Once you start throwing the pastes in like .5 and .25 I get worried about your conclusion on striations. I think they get a little oversmooth and "crisscrossy". Yet the edge in general remains sharp. You almost lose the need for striations (assuming you have a light not heavy beard).

One word of caution though on your conclusion. Many, many have found that each blade needs a differing technique to get ultra sharp (I'm talking wowzer sharp, not just shaving sharp). My most recent conclusion on this is that the main variable in each razor is the precise angle needed on the X pattern in order to striate and then finish each edge. Each edge seems to respond differently (either break microscopically or become hyper fine) in response to a varied angle. Therefore, your new pattern could easily replicate the better angle for an indvidual razor, rather than the best overall pattern. I'd suggest trying your ideas on two razors from two companies with differing grinding techniques over the steel blank.

In general though, especially if your using pastes at the end, you'll probably get some improvement. If you were using high grit stones alone and have a heavy beard you might be heading in the wrong direction (no pun intended).

Let us know how it goes!

Alan,

You make several comments that imply a need for striations with a heavy coarse beard.

Since I have what my wife describes as a "wire brush" beard you caught my interest. Could you please elaborate.

Dave

Dave,

Its in the 1961 Barbers manual, in a more concise manner than I can share here. Here are my thoughts on the matter, only my opinion ofcourse.

The cutting pattern we replicate on a stone creates striations on the edges of each side of the bevel of the razor. These striations, when aligned properly help cut the whiskers of the beard. They need to oppose each other to be most effective. They are the base structure of the fin or cutting edge. They shear the whiskers off appropriately in combination with a sharp edge, which is critical, and a smooth edge, which is very important too. So, I believe the three characteristics your searching for in an edge for say a medium beard are a balance between sharp, smooth (the literal edge itself remains unbroken microscopically) and striated. For fine beards I'm certain that striations probably have little effect. I find for my beard type, or if I shave on a 3 or 4 day beard the striations are much more important. In fact I was able to create shaving edges which were not very sharp at all. They shaved great, yet not extremely close. They only tear down the whiskers, but leave a little stump which makes you feel like you have a really pronounced 5 O'clock shadow, and by 3 o'clock no less :-). This edge has great cutting effect, its heavily striated, which is like having bigger teeth on the edge itself. Therefore this edge is a little too course for a comfy shave or a close shave (imagine shaving with electric clippers or a serrated, yet sharp knife).

If you follow the X pattern or a heal leading stroke and keep the angle correct during the stroke the striation pattern created can help a little in cutting whiskers (more so with a heavy beard). You can create a finer and finer edge and the finer you go the less important the striations become because your honing into an edge as sharp as a DE and it cuts purely on edge sharpness. This lasts about 6-7 days until it dulls. A straight on the other hand can last a few more days, maybe up to 20 or so if your using the striation effectively. Most stones do a great job of leaving a little striation. I still believe that we should leave just a little striation for the best cutting edge. Unfortunately, you can't simply decide that your not using striations and that they are NOT important unless your not honing your razor because the striations are always there, and simply attempting to make them smaller and smaller doesn't make them go away. The question only remains, will you mix the alignment up so much that they don't have the ability to cut, or attempt to use them. Again, either will work. Unaligned striations just have a dendancy to "pull" when shaving. But, you can get the impression that varied angles are ok or even good for honing, because you are smoothing the edge down more and more and if using a light touch, like you should, you can smooth the edge nicely and think, well, "maybe I should have been doing this all along", when what your really doing is emphasizing one characteristic of the edge more than you were before or your finally emphasizing smoothness as much as you should have been all along. You can imagine that continued honing with an ultra light touch will have the same effect as smoothing in varied angles because you never place the blade at the exact same spot, nor run the blade at the exact same angle, although we might all try. So, with either method and a light touch the razor should get very sharp and very smooth. This gives you a great shave and as they say, 'two out of three" ain't bad.

You can read more about it, and see good graphics as well from the 1961 Barbers manual, which I find very helpful. I have added a link to the page in question to help your understanding (or for some, belief). It is the middle link on the URL I provided.

Once you understand the relationship striation actually has on cutting ability it helps to understand other "odd" phenomenom like why a pyramid method works on honing. Leaving a striation in place with a low grit pass, then smoothing for 3-5 passes on a higher grit, makes much more sense once you keep the striation pattern in mind (in my opinion). It also helps you understand why some people find straights "pull" more than a DE or that the edge goes after 5-6 days, and yet others shave for a month or two on the same edge. Or sometimes you can ask someone how they maintain a razor and they'll say "I hone it on a high grit hone every couple of weeks and then all of a sudden I need to go back to the 4K grit for a pass or two". Now I know that many, many passes on an 8K grit, barber hone, or coticule should keep an edge running indefinetly but when it doesn't work anymore, yet obviously keeps "sharpening" I had to start questioning what I knew. I have concluded that even a sharp razor can benefit from a low grit pass occasionally, not so much to make the edge sharper but simply to reapply the striations and get more cutting teeth back on the edge. These ofcourse are resmoothed down again, making their work less appreciated, but they are still there doing the yoemans work of cutting the whiskers, helping to shear them a little, if you will.

It may also explain why some very experienced honers can get a razor to cut effortlessly on almost any rock, even as low as 8k and others need nothing less that .25 paste.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/compo...d,19/Itemid,3/

Wow, that's a very interesting posting.
I think I'll have to reread it to suck up all the information...

Redwoood

Alan,

Thanks for the explanation and the link! Always more to learn!

Dave

Your welcome,

Keep in mind though that the overall effect of striations is minor. Its probably not critical to work at achieving them. They exist regardless of what you do. And they work whether you try to apply them at the right angle or not. At best I can lower pulling a little from a thick beard by trying to align them better.

Great info Alan and thanks for prviding the link. I don't always know why the information is in the old texts, but I'm inclined to trust it. It comes from men who upheld the tradition for genberations before us.

I think what we're talking about here is like swimming if i might use an swimming analogy. You can swim in running shoes but you won't do so well. Take them off and you do better. Use flippers and you're doing better still. That's what I imagine lining up the striations to be like. Getting that extra push.

X

THe best information I was able to get on the benefit of the x-pattern came from the barber manual, but not explicitly. It came from observing the magnified razor edge diagram.

First of all, every abrasive produces scratch lines they just get finer with finer abrasive, but they don't diaappear. using the x-pattern produces scratch lines that go back and toward the tip, but where they intersect the edge they produce a tooth that has a steep leading edge and a shallow trailing edge. If you use the blade in a push fashion or tip leading, the trailing edge is at an angle to the hairs and cuts them with a slicing motion. If you had pushed straight across, you would get a tooth with a even leading and tailing edges, and if you shave with the tip leading (as the manual teaches) the leading edge pushes into the hair and the trailing edge is at sucha sharp angle that it doesn't reall slide across the hair. This is the reason the manual advances the x-pattern: it maximizes cutting when you use the tip leading pattern they teach. Your half-x has different scratch directions on each side (as oppose to having them parallel) so I don't know what it gives you, but it doesn't seem like it could be good.

The treatises choice of that honing pattern seemed to be fairly arbitrary in an effort to eliminate the effect of scratch lines, yet the barber manual specifically ponts out the benefit of those lines.

Even with a 4K stone you have about 12 scratch lines per hair, so I wouldn't expect the effect of the teeth to be a major one, but I also don't see how the half x or double x patterns could be of any benefit. BTW, the scratch lines produced by a strop cross those produced by a hone, so you actually do get a double x pattern if you use hones and pasted strops.

I look forward to the results of your experiment, but I wonder how it could result in meaningful conclusions without testing a lot of blades honed the different ways and then blind tested by different shavers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AFDavis11

The cutting pattern we replicate on a stone creates striations on the edges of each side of the bevel of the razor. These striations, when aligned properly help cut the whiskers of the beard. They need to oppose each other to be most effective. They are the base structure of the fin or cutting edge.

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Since the edge hasbevels, it's the termination of the striations at the edge (or the plateau between them) that produces the teeth we call the fin. I have seen them in high magnification electron microscope shots of a knife edge (if any one is interested, I'll find and provide the URL to the site).

The goal in all knife sharpening is to create the sharpest edge. That comes with the finest striations and accounts for the improved cutting of a coticule honed edge as compared to an 8K. The coarser stones produce teeth which are less sharp (don't cut as well) but hold up better because they have a stronger physical structure. In sharpening, there is always a tradeoff between the sharpness of an edge and its durability. It's no different with razors. The easier cutting associated with a sharper edge comes at the price of having to refresh it more often. It's the reason a Feather DE blade will cleanly remove your whiskers with no force, while an incompletely sharpened str8 will be rough and leave a lot of hair on your face.

Quote:

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So, I believe the three characteristics your searching for in an edge for say a medium beard are a balance between sharp, smooth (the literal edge itself remains unbroken microscopically) and striated. For fine beards I'm certain that striations probably have little effect.

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I don't accept that the heavier striations are necessary for anything but robustness. With a heavy beard they may be indispensible, because the edge would otherwise be too weak, much like a wire edge. But for any other beard, sharper is better, up to the point where you begin to weaken the edge too much. We have infact experienced this from our work with finer pastes, yet the edge preoduce by a .25 paste (100K) is not too weak for most shavers.

Quote:

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If you follow the X pattern or a heal leading stroke and keep the angle correct during the stroke the striation pattern created can help a little in cutting whiskers (more so with a heavy beard). You can create a finer and finer edge and the finer you go the less important the striations become because your honing into an edge as sharp as a DE and it cuts purely on edge sharpness.

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This is where I disagree. Every edge cuts on edge sharpness. The sharper, the better it cuts. It's basic physics and a common principal of sharpening. Note that the treatise looks at the thickness of the edge (literally sharpness) as a figure of merit. I totally agree that coarser striations will improve durability of the edge, but we need to keep the concepts of sharpness and durability separate. If you're willing to work a lot, sharpness will always cut better. BTW, smoothness and sharpness are inseparable, because the finer striations always produce a smoother edge. But there has to be a limit where we can feel smoothness (of the bevels), while the sharpness of the edge continues to improve, which also gives the impression of greater smoothness.

Quote:

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Once you understand the relationship striation actually has on cutting ability it helps to understand other "odd" phenomenom like why a pyramid method works on honing. Leaving a striation in place with a low grit pass, then smoothing for 3-5 passes on a higher grit, makes much more sense once you keep the striation pattern in mind (in my opinion).

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I'm not sure this explains it at all. Larger striations cannot make the edge sharper ro smoother, just more durable. The mixed grit honing gives you fine teeth interspersed by large grit spaces, kind of a serrated pattern. But serrations don't cut smoother. They cut certain types of surfaces, like meat, better (by tearing). A hair is not that type of surface. I think the large grit phenomenon is simply expalined by the fact that it reduces the number of swipes. After the high grit pass you can continue to hone with increasingly finer grits and you will not lose sharpness, but increase it.

Are you saying that and edge with interspersed fine teeth will cut whiskers better than a continuous edge with the same teeth? I don't think there is any evidence for that or that it makes a lot of sense.

Quote:

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It may also explain why some very experienced honers can get a razor to cut effortlessly on almost any rock, even as low as 8k and others need nothing less that .25 paste.

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I think this is explained entirely by experience with a particular hone. Some guys have so much of it with the 8K that they can get very fine results. Others have come to rely on the pasted strop and can't get those results with just a hone.

Alan,

Thanks again for the lead on the Barbers Manual...discovered an additional problem in my technique...not holding the razor flat enought to my face...made that change this morning and had my most comfortable shave yet!

Dave

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tobico4

Alan,

Thanks again for the lead on the Barbers Manual...discovered an additional problem in my technique...not holding the razor flat enought to my face...made that change this morning and had my most comfortable shave yet!

Dave

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Great, actual experience and learning focused on straights and not other cutting tools can produce some interesting knowledge. Have fun!

I guess I need to reread the Barbers Manual. A lot of this is very good info, maybe a bit over my head!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by robertlampo

I've heard of guys who use no x-pattern whatsoever. They use a simple back-and-forth stroke. I hope others weigh in on this too but regardless of the x-pattern or straight stroke, the bevel/edge will still be created.

Maybe someone like Alan could weigh in about the striations - he's done a lot of research about that topic (it always causes controversy).

-Rob

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Toe leading would be like honing the x-pattern from heel to toe, reversing the slant of the scratch lines. I don't know anyone that does that.