First time honing & post shave test.

So as I posted about in a few other threads I had nicked my razor in several spots on the sink faucet. On top of a norton 4/8k, I had decided to order a 220 grit DMT with it. Then I would have something to lap with, as well as a faster cutting hone for the nicks I had to remove.

They arrived yesterday and I tried my hand at this new craft. First I did many laps on the 220 to get the nicks out and set a bevel. After that I used the same pyramid structure found in the pyramid honing guide in the wiki.

25 on the 4k / 25 on the 8k
20 / 20
15 / 15
10 / 10
5 / 5
3 / 3
1 / 3
1 / 5

Then I stropped and shaved. The razor cut easily, and there was no tugging. But it left my whole face with razor burn after only one pass WTG.

The question is how do I interpret this? Over/under-honed? Micro-chipped?

I doubt it is over-honing, and I'm not sure anything like that exists anyway. Good honing can be overdone, but only in the sense of wasting time and steel.

I'd give it another try and back WAY off on pressure. If you get the same result, please advise.

As for micro-chipping, that should be evident under a 10X loupe. I've shaved with chipped blades but didn't get razor burn.

Start over with some pressure on the 4K and see what happens.

220 to 4000 is a huge jump - you need to do a lot of strokes to smooth out the scratches from the 220 grit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HNSB

220 to 4000 is a huge jump - you need to do a lot of strokes to smooth out the scratches from the 220 grit.

This ! 220 - 4000 is a big ask with a total of only 80 strokes on 4k.

If you want to even the gap between 220 and 4000, put some lather on the 220 then try a little slurry on the 4000. Raise it with the 220 and try a few stokes before moving on to just water. Remember light pressure when you finish on the 8000. Also many times i find i over look my shaving techniques and stropping and think that the honing job was the problem. That might not be the case, but you still need to rule it out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 111Nathaniel

If you want to even the gap between 220 and 4000, put some lather on the 220 then try a little slurry on the 4000. Raise it with the 220 and try a few stokes before moving on to just water. Remember light pressure when you finish on the 8000. Also many times i find i over look my shaving techniques and stropping and think that the honing job was the problem. That might not be the case, but you still need to rule it out.

Why hello my fellow newfie. Looks like you aren't the only one after all haha. I was born and raised there until I was 8 years old my family moved west to BC.

So I read your posts and did some other research. One big mistake I made the first time is that I didn't lap my brand new 4/8k AT ALL. After learning the pencil grid lapping method and trying it out, I was amazed at how uneven the hones factory surface was. This coupled with the fact that the surfaces got way smoother and nicer the more I lapped it. Now comparing the honing surfaces with the un-lapped sides of the hone is like night and day.

I then figured another identical pyramid would get rid of the leftover 220 grit scratches as well as give me a good edge to shave with. So that's exactly what I did. I skipped out on the tests this time and figured I would just go for the shave test since last time I wasn't really able to interpret anything from any of the tests I did. Upon finishing the pyramid, I stropped and shaved, still with no luck. I think it was partially a bad shave because my skin was still sensitive from the last bad shave, but still partially because the razor wasn't shave ready.

But today I watched gssixgun's honing video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y53SL9QMq6I
I learned a lot from that video. It taught me how to use the arm hair and thumbnail test much better than just reading the wiki articles. It taught me that there is no real formula for honing like the pyramid I was using before. The number/style/exact technique of strokes doesn't really matter too much as long as whatever you do works for you. Highly recommend this video for anyone who wants to hone. I even watched another one of his videos, I think it was the JaNorton peice where near the end he demonstrated his stropping, and he was really giving it to that strop. I never came near that speed the relatively few times I've stropped. It was pretty awesome when I tried it.

I honed it again this morning with much less care towards number of strokes and what not. I also lapped my 4k down a few more millimeters as advised by Lynn to get rid of the coarseness. I didn't go a full 1/8th down because I was too excited to try honing again haha. Anyway I did hundreds of little circles on the 4k lightening the pressure as I went. I felt I should redo the circles 2 or 3 times because I kept tapping the blade on the hone or the sink counter top accidentally. That or I would lift up on the heel or toe without realizing because I was trying to lighten the pressure.

I ended up doing a lot of honing on the 4k. I kept doing the arm hair test and TNT and once I was happy with them I did some more careful x strokes easing off the pressure. Then I switched to 8K for a bunch of firm strokes - back to the 4k for a couple very light stokes - back to 8k for some medium strokes - 4k for a couple light strokes - lapped the 8k and did some medium strokes with slurry - finally I lapped and totally cleaned the 8k, wiped off the excess water and did 15-20 light strokes.

That really did the trick. Arm hairs popped very easily. I'm going to give my face a couple more days to heal from the butchering I did to it in the last 2 days before I shave test this one.

I had a feeling 220 to 4k would be a big jump seeing as how most people seem to set the bevel with 1k. But I didn't know if the 1k would have been good for lapping. I didn't want to buy both the 220 and 1k because $150 was enough to spend with free shipping =/.

But anyway, I've tried the circular honing and it's not as hard as I thought it would be. So I shouldn't have a problem with it in the future now that I kind of know what I'm looking for.

The only problem now is that I don't have hundreds of dull razors to hone because I enjoy doing it that much =P