Thread: I'm not sure how or when it happened

But today i appear to be able to hone.

I'm not saying that i'm a honemiester or experienced or particularly efficient, or the next greatest thing in honing. All i know is i sat down at 5pm with 3 razors in various stages of sharpness from "not" to "only just shaves" determined to get a good shaving edge and at 11 i have 3 razors that have passed TPT, HHT (with chest and head hair, don't ask) and shaves with out tug or drag.

Here's what happened.

I think leaving something for a while and coming back to it can be beneficial, in my case i went to the rig for 10 days. I've been honing for a month or so, with the help of some of the guys on the forum walking me thru my baby steps, and i'd got to the above mentioned "only just shaves" but none of my razors HHT'd (maybe once but i think that was luck). just couldn't seem to push it over the edge to shave ready.

I realise HHT is a party trick but in my case it's useful, no razor i have that doesn't pass the HHT doesn't shave without tugging.

While i was at the rig, i thought and thought and thought and came up with a plan.

I'd already discovered that i prefer to set bevels with a 220, tape and pressure. I give it enough laps to get rid of chips, bring up a little fresh metal and move up to a 1k where i do enough work to smooth out the 220 work.

after this i went with pyramid honing and i just never got there, as much as i tried.

I remembered while in my bunk something i read on a custom makers site about the pyramid method and how he didn't like it. How being able to recognise when enough work was done on a grit levell without going back and forth.

So i aimed to do the following. Work on a grit stage until the marks left behind by the previous stage had gone and the edge was straight and even

So i went to work, set the bevel checking, every 5 laps with the loupe to see where i was. i noticed that the scrathces from a previous stage would be deeper and darker than the current stages scratches, and when these had gone, the bevel was a uniform colour and edge smooth, I'd be ready to go up. This was all in conjunction with MMT, TNT, and TPT where applicable

for the first time ever, i got the razor shaving arm hair off the 1k. i moved up doing what i described removing the tape at the 4k, and going for light as possible on the 8k. when i checked with the loupe and it seemed like i was there, i went to TPT. i got the result that i feel on my shave ready razors, so i took it to the bathroom, 20 laps on linen 50 on latigo and tried an HHT. popped hair first time with every razor. after this i did 20 laps on the naninwa 12k and a further set of linen and latigo.

I did one stage with all 3 razors at the same time so i could compare, was good to have a baseline. that way i could deal with inconsistencies and get all three in the same conditon. i checked constantly with the loupe so that i did the minimum amount of strokes to get where i needed to be.

Now, they may need a little bit more smoothing out but i got to a point i have NEVER got to before.

By the way, my Grelot is very nice honed up

ok, so there we go, now this disclaimer.

This worked for me, I am not disparaging the pyramid method, or saying i know better than the many many more experienced, and better honers and honemeisters on the site, I just mean that i found something else that works for me personally. and to be honest, I'm glad, because at the end of the day all i really want to do is to be able to hone my own razors

Cheers Guys

Nice job!

That is kinda how it goes, you just sit down to hone one day and it all falls into place. Its like learning any other process or playing an instrument. You go through the process again and again and one day it just falls into place!

Originally Posted by Stubear

Nice job!

That is kinda how it goes, you just sit down to hone one day and it all falls into place. Its like learning any other process or playing an instrument. You go through the process again and again and one day it just falls into place!

Same here, a razor I couldn't get sharp 1 year ago, I got sharp in 1/2 hour last week. I think the hands develop muscle memory and feel after many reps.

Practice is an amazing thing... Good job

Now let me give you a small hint: Don't forget about that Pyramid, about 6 months from now go back to it and re-learn it and you will find it belongs in your bag of tools

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Practice is an amazing thing... Good job

Now let me give you a small hint: Don't forget about that Pyramid, about 6 months from now go back to it and re-learn it and you will find it belongs in your bag of tools

I'll def give it a go again when i've developed the skillset a bit

Cheers guys! i'll maybe go give my Wedge another attempt. Also noticed my bevels have went from wide and uneven to narrower and consistent. still not perfect, but better.

Big 'Grats, Tekbow. It feels great to shave w/ your own edges. Keep posting & asking questions. The help here is fantastic.

Congrats and thanks for telling how you progressed.

You say you removed the tape at 4k; that confuses me. If I do anything new with tape midhone, I add it before the 12k to get a microbevel. But if you remove tape at 4k, then you lift the edge tip off the hones and just polish a shoulder a hair's width back from the tip.

What you did worked for you, but please close this logical gap for me.

No no, good question, thanks for asking it

This was something i came across in the Wiki and it seems to have worked well for me, especially as i would rather set a bevel on a 220 with a few strokes and polish up one a 1K

basically it works like this, tape the spine and use a medium pressure when doing your strokes. what seems to happen is that because of hollow grinds the blad will deflect a little. this means the angle you're setting the blade at will hopefully be the same as the angle you have when removing the tape and using no pressure. I tape only to protect the spine at lower grit levels. And i doubt it would work with a wedge, too stiff possibly but seems to work with a quarter hollow.

The theory was definitely born out by the MMT which showed after i removed the tape i was still making contact with the edge, and also by using the loupe which showed i was polishing on the same width of bevel as i had set.

Hope this helps

OK, that makes sense. Sounds kinda ballsy, to gamble on matching the eventual unflexed bevel with a flexed one. I'll have to furrow my brow a while to see how this differs from taping for the final polish.

Furrowing now...

I did with three razors and got good consistent results, one was full hollow and the other two quarter hollows. althought the bevel wasn't as much of a gamble i guess as i leave the magic marker on when stroking to make sure i'm not getting massive uneven bevels, so i was constantly adjusting the stroke and pressure too. i did that at all grit stages.

Now.. trying to get my head around your methodology, so your saying that you don't use tape up until the 12k at all including the bevel setting then tape to establish a microbevel right? I guess, off the top of my head, the difference is that at no point during what i was doing was there a microbevel established, in fact i worked to maintain as narrow a single bevel as i could with out getting into multiple bevels. as i said, the only reason tape was used was to protect the spine from the 220 and 1k stages, then the minimum strokes after (checked on the loupe etc) so that spine wear was kept to a minimum.

I think?