So I am pretty excited about this:

I bought Norton combination waterstones earlier this year (220/1000 and 4000/8000) and decided to try my hand at honing. I guess I had pretty high expectations, since my first razor was honed by Lynn. I picked up a couple of cheaper razors to practice on, but I couldn't seem to get the hang of it. I considered my technique and spent a lot of time just thinking about it.

A couple of months ago, my grandfather gave me an old Red Point razor that he had for around 50 years, but never used. It had a dull knife edge, and needed some cleaning up. I figured that I could work on this one, and see the difference made by my efforts relatively quickly. At least I wasn't going to make it worse.

I set everything up, and set to it. I started with the 1000 grit, to set a bevel (it didn't really have one). I noticed right away that the stone was cutting relatively well, but the coverage along the edge was uneven. I focused on specific areas of the edge until I had an even bevel across the entire edge. After moving to the 4000 and eventually 8000, I did a shave test. Fantastic!

The thing that I most learned in this process was that until you have a good bevel, you're wasting your time on the finer grits. I also wasn't overly concerned with over-honing at this point, or counting strokes, or doing pyramids. I just did a few strokes, looked at the edge, and decided if I needed to do more. Not too complicated, but I had to stay with it. Stopping too early will discourage you when you come to the shave test.

The old Red Point is one of the best shavers that I have now, and my finishing was off of the 8000 grit. Obviously, I can shave well from the 8000, but I see that some people use a 12000, 30000, or pasted strop to finish. If anyone reads this all the way to the end, I would be interested to know what you use to finish the razor, if you hone.

Cheers,
Sam