Thread: 4 hours on 3k, and still not enough

yep, if you were accidentally trying to set the bevel off the 8000k you will be honing for months. I'm fairly new to honing with a few str8's under my belt as well. If you truly want to hone it yourself, make sure your hones are properly lapped, and you use the 3000k side of the stone, with some patience and time you will be able to set the bevel.
The magic marker test is a great tool to use and has helped me considerably. A loupe or magnifying glass is helpful too.

Everyone has given great advice. My suggestion if you want to continue honing yourself, is go to youtube and watch gssixguns video's. He has great reviews on his honing work and I've watched his video's and they are very helpful. If you get frustrated put it down and think about it and then come back to it. Each blade is a little different and experience is key. These guys make it look easy because they do it so much.

Originally Posted by bemil

I just found out that the notifications of the grits on the case of my 3k/8k water stone are the opposite of what was printed on the stone.
Anyone else having a problem getting a bevel set on a 8k ???

I gave you both a like and a thanks on this post!

Thank you for saying OOOPs. I had the wrong side. that shows me you are willing to take advice and admit what happened. then go on.

I like it because it shows how we learn from each other. I like to use this process when I am stumped at work. Things just aren't going right and if you admit that to another they can look at it from a different angle and see what the problem is. Onimaru55 has obviously seen this before and he brought up something that I have not experienced and therefore didn't think of. I will remember now!

Your learning is far from over and I am sure you will have many more questions. You have been given some good advice in this thread and do searches for other questions. If you can't find the answers Onimaru55 or others can point you in the right direction.

Tim

Originally Posted by onimaru55

Emil. A couple of things I know from experience.
....
Hope this helps.

A prime example why sometimes real experience is all it takes to provide the correct help.

Emil, I'm going to address a couple of your assumptions.
(1) Honing isn't particularly hard, many people think it's just a bunch of even uniform strokes and that's probably the easiest part to master. The hard part is learning to 'read' the current status of the edge and then knowing what to do next. It's not rocket science, but just takes time and experience.
(2) Honing a razor from setting a bevel is therefore vastly more difficult than just maintaining an already properly honed razor sharp. In the later case you only need one good hone and few strokes every now and then.
So, if your objective is to learn to set proper bevels and progress through the grits to shaving edge, that's one thing and there are no shortcuts, but it's certainly not necessary for long term shaving with a straight razor.
(3) The only thing that can speed up your learning is if you have somebody help you with some reference points along the way. I.e. if you can see what the edge should look and feel like at the various stages in the progression that will help you a lot.

As a curiosity illustrating point (1) a number of years ago two members JoshEarl and heavidutysg135 ran an experiment - they put a proper bevel on razors and sent them to beginners to do the final steps with pyramids on norton 4k/8k. All beginners who had problems honing those razors previously, had no problem getting a nice shaving edge. That just illustrates that the real challenge for most people is not knowing when to switch hones. So they do too few or too many strokes in both cases getting bad results. Too few strokes doesn't sharpen the razor enough, too many ensures that there'll be enough uneven ones to mess the edge up.