A new comer's honing journal(fellow newbs stay tuned!)
Hello gentlemen, a few days from now my wife and son are heading back to Ontario, and I will be staying in Alberta alone(for financial reasons). When they are gone, I will truly begin my honing journal. But for now here is the jist!
I started this thread for a few reasons, one of which being that I personally found the wealth of knowledge on this forum for honing to be fairly extensive and helpful as well as INTIMIDATING. Finding threads warning new comers to stay off the stones and to send their razors to the pros, the threads encompassing different approaches to honing, different strokes and stones, it was a lot to take in for someone new to this,especially someone who prefers to do things himself. First I will say, everything from here on out is my experience and my opinion and should in no way be taken against what the experts say! there are many GOOD reasons to NOT do what I am currently doing, though I am a firm believer in to each their own. Another reason I have for starting this is because I want to share this experience I will have with other new comers and hopefully help show a more simple and easy side to razor honing for those who will not be discouraged as I felt at first.
A week ago I purchased my first set of water stones from Lee Valley for $133.00 1k,4k, and 8k(including the nagura stone).Before this, I had planned to send out a set of seven different razors for professional honing, $120 value before shipping prices, and I was also planning on buying a Norton 4K/8K stone for up keep, another $80 value. Well I really didn't want to send my precious razors away, I have a hard time waiting on shipping time lines and this would have been a big one! And then I discovered my King Stones( King Water Stones - Lee Valley Tools - Woodworking Tools, Gardening Tools, Hardware Supplies ). I talked to the guy at the store there for a good half hour about them and he convinced me to get them, besides, they were out of the Norton stone anyway, and i had waited in the parking lot an hour for them to open as i got there way too early from across town and did not want to go home empty handed. So far for the price of them I love them, I have honed up my first razor with them and all though I am still working on it, I found them to cut quickly and very evenly and with one layer of tape, they gave great feedback.
My first Razor to hone has been my H Eicker & Sohne 51 Biedermere. This razor had a pin hole right through the blad due to extreme pitting(and autosol) very near the blade edge. My first step to repairing this razor (which caused me to start honing from absolute scratch) was to `bread-knife`the edge(for those that do not know, bread knifing is a process of grinding the blade edge down to restart a bevel or to remove a frown in the blade by running the blade edge straight down on a low grit stone to square the edge). This took me some time, but I was successful in bread knifeing my razor to the point that i could no longer even cut tape :p.
My next step was to establish my bevel. Using one layer of tape only(that I had to replacee after every 10 laps on my 1K) I started to do small `circles` up and down the entire stone face of my 1K. I switched between this and X strokes and shortly I had a pretty crisp and uniform bevel! It was great to see, as nearly all of my razors have almost no bevel that i can see clearly, unless i bounce light off of it. After the 1K I followed through to my 4K and then the 8K. I finished on my `barber stone`(i dont know what it is, but it cuts fine) and tried a test shave.
I shaved my entire face. WTG, XTG, ATG with some success and mixed results. I found the razor pulled on WTG, though i had 3-4 days beard growth. It also didnt quite seem as close of a shave as my other razors, though I had almost no irritation at all and absolutely no nicks. It also did not pass an HHT, and though I understand the `hanging hair test`is widely contested and disputed for accuracy and reliability, I like to see my razor `pass`it. I will not discuss the HHT any further on this thread though. I was pleased and encouraged to further refine my razor edge. The next day I hit the `barber`hone again and discovered that this stone has made my razor`s edge aggressive, the next days shave with the beidermeier was not as pleasant, and I decided to take a fellow member and honemeister`s advice to stop useing this stone. Today, after revisiting my 8K stone I found my razor to be back to where it was after its first hone, and I have decided to continue refining with the 8K stone.
More to come later, and thank you for reading!
