Thread: Honing with a Barber's Hone - Help !

Hello Gentleman,
I'm very new to straight shaving and to this forum. Presently I own a Vintage straight and a winner double sided barber hone. My razor is started pull So I did few(20 each side) circles on the White side of the hone with lather. The condition did not improve very much. I heard the brown side of the hone is 4K and white side is 8K.
Can any of you gentleman help me with making my razor very sharp with my set up ?

Do you have a strop? If not start there first. If so then what I would do and I'm no expert but I would do 4 or 5 laps on the dark side followed by 5 on the light side and check if you can shave arm hair with it. If so, then I would personally go to a pasted strop 5 or 10 passes then to the linen for 30 passesand finally on the leather for 75 passes. But as stated above I'm no expert

I assume your razor was well honed initially, right? If not, you may need to "cut" it a little first. That is, don't use the lather to begin with, use some slurry. You will find it "cuts" better with the slurry on the stone. You can get up a little slurry easily, just take a small piece of sandpaper [wet/dry 400 or 600 or so] or use a little stone and take it and rub it on the cutting side of the stone first. I generally use the slurry when I need a little steel removed. Then, I use the lather on the finishing side of the stone to polish it up. But, it is a progression, for me anyway. It kind of goes like this: slurry on cutting side - then slurry on the polishing side - scrub the stone - then a little bit of lather on the polishing side. This generally has worked for me, without spending a small fortune on sharpening tools anyway.

do I have to do some laps with lather on the brown side before moving to white side?

I'm really no expert here, however, I think you can skip the two lather part. In my experience [I use lather all the time, for polishing], lather is a fine polisher. It also acts to some degree as a cleaner of the metal - if your steel needs it, that is. Personally, I hone my own razors with some degree of success. But sometimes, I find it difficult, if not impossible to get an edge on one ore two of my razors. I also tend not to dwell on it. I have a handful of razors that always hone up nicely and never nick myself while using. So therefore, I tend to gravitate to the several. Another suggestion: I discovered some time ago that so long as the skin is pulled very tightly, you will rarely, if ever, nick yourself.

I tried about 10 strokes on the brown side with water and 10 on the white side with lather? The razor do not perform nicely (Little tugging_)
What should I do?
Will this deteriorate the edge?

see if this works do eight to ten on the white side. (the fine side) strop on news paper if you dont have a strop, then test shave if it pulls go back to step one and repeat untill it doesn't pull .i use single strokes back and forth i dont do circles hope this helps

One other piece of advice: while learning to hone, you should probably put a piece of electric tape on the spine. And don't worry about the residue [glue] upon removal, just wipe it with a little mineral spirits and it will come right off nicely. Also, I'm in total agreement with eleblu05 above, you should probably quit the circles. And, if your razor has a "smile," which may be the case, there is a tutorial on this site for that.

Moved to the "Honing Forum" and adjust the Title so maybe someone who owns or has used a 2 sided "Winner" can chime in...

Personally I have never much found a use for the "Rough" side of a Barber's Hone, if the razor has slipped that much IMHO it needs a re-hone and not a re-fresh...

I have only re-honed using a 2 sided hone Once just to see if it could be done, once was enough...

There are so many variables that you have not supplied us with, but just reading your post it seems that the razor was just losing it's edge which means that the fine side of the hone and 5-8 strokes should have done the trick...
Now keep in mind that that info is not accurate for many variables..

If you google "gssixgun barbers hone" you will see a vid of a few different ways to use them, there are many more vids out there too...

If you have already dropped to the rough side of the hone you have some work ahead getting the shaving edge back

I use lather all the time, for polishing], lather is a fine polisher. It also acts to some degree as a cleaner of the metal - if your steel needs it, that is

If you could point me in the direction of where this information originally came from, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to speak out of course, but this information is directly contrary to published information available on SRP for download. Just trying to do my due diligence, and learn something along the way if possible. Thanks!

OP: Keep practicing, and be patient. I'm not gonna throw in my two cents, cause I think you got all the info you need. Just keep at it with the info you have.