Thread: I planned to listen to the vets and not start honing yet, but...

FYI, in my very humble opinion, with little shaving experience to back it up, I find my 1K, 3K, barber hone, pasted strop, canvas strop, leather strop progression to sharpen the four blades so far as well as my favorite that was professionally honed. These are all old Solingen blades. I also tried the infamous Chinese brand and was not able to hone it. This is my honing experience thus far

Hmmm... I have some explaining to do. I've known this for a while, but recently realized I should come back and clarify this post. I was wrong. I found a stone on eBay that claimed to be a 1200/3000 combo stone. I bought it, honed some razors with it, and got lucky once in a while with one that shaved after I finished it on my barber hone. I chalked the others up to the learning experience. Having never seen a stone finer than 600 grit (for my knives), I never questioned the stone from eBay.

A couple of weeks later I bought a King combo stone. It's a 1K/6K combo. Upon further review, my first stone was not 1200/3K. It might be 300/1K. At best. I didn't know what I was talking about when I started this thread, which is OK, but spouted off about it in a way that would influence others, which is not. So sorry fellow noobs, and more experienced guys that probably snickered and waited for this post. I'll continue to experiment and have fun, though.

Thanks,
Dave

I differ. Honing isn't that easy. It's not easy to learn and, depending on the razor, it's not easy to do. Take heart, not everyone gets it on the 1st or 100th try.
Rocket science no, it's mineral hardness and geometry.

Oh, I learned a lot, to be sure. I have shaven with multiple razors that I honed at about 1K, which is certainly pretty cool. Not smooth, but cool. And now I can put a pretty good edge on most razors (using the new stone and barber hone), including a near wedge (Union Spike). I think I learned a lot of the things the guys on here are trying to teach, without realizing it. It wasn't the smoothest way of learning, though, and a fair amount of razor burn was involved.