Circles on narrow hones

I've had good results with circles on 40mm wide hones using my own technique.

At the start of the stroke, the circles are near the heel, then by the time I get to the end I'm circling just the toe.

Anyone have a reason not to do this? Or maybe some tips on improving it?

Michael

I do similar strokes on any hone to make up for underhoned heels and toes. No problem I can imagine as long as you don't overhone in the middle.

On a narrow hone like that I keep my blade angled like 45degrees with the heel forward, that way more of the blade is touching the hone and at the same time keeps the stabilizer of the stone.
When following with X strokes I usually start around 45degrees and end the stroke close to 90degrees at the tip.
Just make sure to keep the edges of the stone rounded and smooth and the blade flat on the hone, a few swipes across the rough edge of the stone can quickly destroy a perfectly good edge.
My favorite size hone is 15x5 cm or 6x2 inch, I have a coticule and a jnat that size and they are perfect for hand honing (IMO). Only for setting the bevel I like to use a full size hone (8x3 chosera 1000). YMMV.

I watched this video of Lynn doing circles and I thought his circles were in fact narrow ovals (so the blade was moving much more back-and-forth and not so much side-to-side). I tried this (doing more or less back-and-forth zig-zags only) when I wanted an aggressive stroke to remove some chipping. Seemed to work well, and might also be suited to a narrower hone.

Disclaimer: I'm a newbie and have little idea what I'm doing. :)

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Originally Posted by Matt69

I watched this video of Lynn doing circles and I thought his circles were in fact narrow ovals (so the blade was moving much more back-and-forth and not so much side-to-side). I tried this (doing more or less back-and-forth zig-zags only) when I wanted an aggressive stroke to remove some chipping. Seemed to work well, and might also be suited to a narrower hone.

Disclaimer: I'm a newbie and have little idea what I'm doing. :)

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Its strange you should mention ovals, I was just about to say, I do halfstrokes (if its a smilie = half moon strokes) but they more often than not end up ovals with my 35mm hone. But I would say its 90/10 in favour of being a halfstroke as opposed to circles, I've found circles harder to keep the edge even on a narrower hone than with halfstrokes, sort of seesaws between the toe and heel hanging off the hone.

I try to keep the whole edge on the hone at the one time, however narrow the hone is.

regards Alex

Edit: seems from the other posts that a slight smilie stroke will save you having to isolate hone on certain areas. I tend to have my index finger on the toe of the razor at the spine to keep balance and get an even stroke (using very little pressure). It also gives better control when you do a quarter/half moon stroke

The real trick to using circles, is the stroke after the circles...

You have to sharpen and even up the bevel, so if you are doing circles on separate parts of the edge (what you are doing with the thin stone) you are going to have to interrupt those circles with X strokes to keep evening up the bevel as you go...

In the end the bevel has to be sharp and even, I hope that made a bit of sense...

I know exactly what yer talking about Glenn! when I was still learning to hone, I would do 6 sets of halfstrokes with one side cutting hair and the other side cut nothing, until I introduced 5-10 slow lightweight concentrated backstrokes (I feel it keeps the water on the hone better than standard xstrokes IMO) after each set. The result was a set bevel in 2-3 sets of strokes, using circles or otherwise. Repeat for rest of progression and great edges are not far away :)

regards
Alex

When I do circles on narrower stones, I do try to angle the razor a bit to keep as much on the stone as possible. The cirecles are definltely small one and when I follow up with X strokes, usually a few more than when doing circles on wider stones, the X strokes normally do a good job of blending or making sure any small ridges created in the circle process are blended into the overall bevel.

Have fun.

I agree with all of the above as I do circles to set my bevel on the Norton 4K side of my 4k/8k stone. I let the razor put up it's own slurry as I work it, and thin it out as I progress. I don't think I"ve used my 1K stone for bevel setting for the past 10 honnings or more that I've done, go figure.
Maybe not the best technique, but it's mine!

Thank you all for all your input over the years, has helped me a lot, really.

Sincerely tinkersd.