Thread: Pressure and torque: An observation.

A while ago I had several "AHA" moments due to this thread: http://straightrazorpalace.com/honin...tml?highlight=

I finally developed a fine and controlled one handed honing stroke for those super fine finishing stones.

But here's the catch, ever since that thread my edges went down the drain, my usually reliable HHT were suddenly failing all over and the shaves were lousy, incredibly frustrating.

I tried all sorts of stuff, various progression of pastes and sprays on leather and balsa, sprays on my stones, you name it.
And the edges were still crap, suddenly my Feather SS and DE's got a lot more use due to my frustration.

So finally I had to sit down and try to evaluate what the heck was going on.


Obviously a honing stroke that was so light you'd need a Hadron Collider to measure it was not working out. At all.

Then suddenly something Glen said to me during that previous thread came to mind, he always apply some torque towards the edge when honing. Even when doing the light finishing strokes.

And that was it, I whipped out the Shaptons for like the 10th time in a couple days, kept the pressure still light, but torqued the razor towards the edge at all times, even doing the "3-2-1" on the Shapton 30k.

Even when stropping I could feel I had my good edge back, the image I saw in my scope looked like my "old" edges and when I finally got to shave, I had a killer smooth shave, thank heavens!



So what have I learned?

We are dealing with metal, it needs some contact with the hones, doing a Yoda-stroke using the Force to barely hover over the hones does little.

Keep pressure down, use slight torque, you want the very edge to positively contact the hone at all times.

Now the real work ahead is finding just the right balance for the finest hones, to really tap into edge magic.

Glad to be out of this rut, it was no fun.

That is good advice! I've found that if I hold the shank for honing the same way I hold it for stropping, I achieve the torque necessary to put enough light pressure on the edge: honing thumb sits on the corner of the shank nearest the edge. Just that small bit of leverage seems to be all that is necessary, and you can then just concentrate on making the stroke smooth and leave the torque issue to your thumb.

James.

Contact with the spine is only for the sake of assuring a consistent bevel angle. It's the contact with the edge that is critical and I think with too light a stroke, it's easy to get a little "slop" going on. We must remember that we're honing steel, not molding clay. You have to remove steel to reveal a new edge. Once you've achieved that, the rest is just refining and polishing your new edge, which isn't usually best done on the same stone you actually created the edge with in the first place. That would be like trying to do finish sanding with the same sandpaper that you used for shaping a piece of wood. I think one of the biggest problems people may have with honing is being too tentative with their honing and babying the razor too much. Steel has to be removed, albeit a very small amount. So you can't hone like you're afraid to wear the steel down because wearing the steel down is exactly what you need to do. Just my thoughts on it.

By 'torque' do you mean downwards force on the edge or twisting of the blade on the stone?

Originally Posted by ace

By 'torque' do you mean downwards force on the edge or twisting of the blade on the stone?

Twisting the blade indeed.

Originally Posted by PapaBull

Contact with the spine is only for the sake of assuring a consistent bevel angle. It's the contact with the edge that is critical and I think with too light a stroke, it's easy to get a little "slop" going on. We must remember that we're honing steel, not molding clay. You have to remove steel to reveal a new edge. Once you've achieved that, the rest is just refining and polishing your new edge, which isn't usually best done on the same stone you actually created the edge with in the first place. That would be like trying to do finish sanding with the same sandpaper that you used for shaping a piece of wood. I think one of the biggest problems people may have with honing is being too tentative with their honing and babying the razor too much. Steel has to be removed, albeit a very small amount. So you can't hone like you're afraid to wear the steel down because wearing the steel down is exactly what you need to do. Just my thoughts on it.

Yup, that's pretty much it.

Great Post.

I have seen many a new person actually use almost a negative pressure or lifting the razor to where the stone is not cutting into the edge or coming in contact with a strop for that matter, which is also not a good thing.

The visualization you are giving is very good. The terms no pressure and weight of the blade can be very confusing sometimes, but you still need the stone to be cutting to get the desired results.

I always try to get people to set the razor flat on the stone and balance it which means that the pressure is basically the weight of the blade. Keeping the elbow up is very helpful here. When you then push and pull the blade, both the edge and the spine are in contact with the stone and you can feel the resistance based on the feedback of the stone you are using. The biggest problems for people sometimes is that they are either using too much pressure from the 8K to finishing or not enough and the not enough sometimes can be uneven pressure which will also no get to the desired results.

Have fun.

Thank you Lynn.

Part of the fun (and this time frustration) is trying out the extremes, this time I went too far in the "no pressure" direction, or rather not applying the pressure correctly.
Oh well, that's how we learn isn't it?

As I've said before, if this was really easy I'd be bored silly of it a long time ago.

Hmm.. thanks guys, I'll be trying my hand at it again tonight i think

Duh, I even got a decent shave from the coti I had almost written off as unusable. Lol.