Thread: how much does your stroke weigh?

Luckily SWMBO is not at home and does not read this forum.


A couple of days ago she bought a new kitchenscale (hope this is the right word for it in english ) Today when I am home alone for a couple of hours I´m finding a better use for this unnecessary kitchen apliance.
If a similar post already exists I am sorry.
Testing all my regular strokes, this is the final result:
all strokes exept the halfstroke is done with one hand. and the weight of the razor is 5g/0.2oz.

Ordinary stroke or X stroke: Heavy:350-370g/12-13oz Ordinary:110-120g/4-5oz Light:15-20g/0.5-1oz Feather:3-5g/0.1-0.4oz
Circles : ordinary:180-200g/7-8oz Light(or 8k and upwards):40-50g/2-2.5oz
Half stroke both hands on the razor(honing out chips etc): 1000-1200g/21-25oz.

This is my honing arsenal, if anybody else has a handy scale and some time to throw away please post your results. I know I´m doing something right having honed about 90-120 razors to more or less shave ready, but it would be interesting to see if there are big differences in hone pressure out there

cool post man...I am not huge into honing right now but I would be interested to see what my pressure was at

Originally Posted by sleekandsmooth

cool post man...I am not huge into honing right now but I would be interested to see what my pressure was at

Thanks I was never sure how to interpret light and heavy strokes from other honing posts. Now I have found out for myself how I do things, but a couple of years ago I would have appreciated a post like this.

That's great that you're actually able to get less than the weight of the razor on the hone. Seriously feather light touch there! I must admit, I'm intrigued to know what my honing strokes are like. I think most importantly I'm curious whether it's possible for me to get the light honing stroke with an extra guiding finger from the other hand helping out with balancing (as my one handed strokes have never seemed stable enough).

Perhaps I ought to try out one of these scales!

Originally Posted by tlittle

That's great that you're actually able to get less than the weight of the razor on the hone. Seriously feather light touch there! I must admit, I'm intrigued to know what my honing strokes are like. I think most importantly I'm curious whether it's possible for me to get the light honing stroke with an extra guiding finger from the other hand helping out with balancing (as my one handed strokes have never seemed stable enough).

Perhaps I ought to try out one of these scales!

Probably not. Try holding the razor by the shank and balance it in the finger and thumb. Then lift slightly as you stroke. Place your pinky under the scales preventing them from lowering. If the scales can not drop, then the blade can not lift.

Two fingers will simply double the pressure of one finger.

Great idea! I agree, it would be interesting to see the numbers other members would post. Any of our honemeisters reading this.....

We did this at a Toronto meet a while back with Dllandry's scale. IIRC, holli's heavy pressure was about 400g.

I've never measured my pressure, but I can. If I have a spare moment in the next couple days, I'll give it a whirl.

Mine weighs 6kg. More is better, right? Hang on, what are we talking about again?

James.

Yeah for me having a number to put with what equaled heavy med and light pressure and then try to reproduce what holli did was a big help for me

As a n00b I'm curious about this pressure topic. I read somewhere "oh yea I finished with some super light like negative pressure stokes". I thought oh okay that's cool but then in practice when I put my razor on a hone I find just to keep it steady through a stroke I need to at least put some pressure on it. After all the edge needs to contact the stone and everything should stay steady and consistent to prevent any mishaps like rolling an edge or running edge on edge of stone. Should I be thinking that 'super feather light negative pressure' would just that minimum pressure where it's all smooth, consistent and of course stone contact? I tried balancing my Norton 4/8 on a bottle cap. It moved horizontally a bit at times but not vertically so I think I need to 'lighten up' so it doesn't move at all? I'm just trying to set a baseline for what a finishing stroke should be like then moving up from there as a guide for the pressure concept. Like if I know what good finish stroke pressure is then when I'm setting a bevel at 1k I'll use more pressure and taper it off to my 'super feather light negative pressure' strokes for finishing or moving up to the next stone depending on where I'm at. I'm aware that more care be taken with a full hollow etc so as not to flex the blade. When I mention the edge needs to contact the stone(while of course keeping the spine flat and in contact) this is important to me because I realized most if not all of my razors are smiles to varying degrees and I couldn't get a proper bevel set off a straight stroke (I hear you more experienced guys going 'well, no duh!') so in that case a swooping X is the correct way? Am I on the right track here?

'At this point in time' hehe I will post a vid where Glen illustrates the swoop. At 3:00 he says he's swooping it


Here is the rolling X
Rolling X stroke - Straight Razor Place Wiki

Is there a difference between these 2 strokes? It was suggested to me that swoop for smiles and roll for slight warps.