Thread: went to a honing course yesterday.

Summary:

first got some basics about the blade, what makes it dull/sharp, general material and build (and it's relationship with the shrpness)

then we went onto the honing:

1) basic honing technique on belgian coticule
2) go through piece of paper with your blade to remove any 'crud' left on top of the razor
3) go over pasted paddle strop (TI 'red paste', anyone know how this compares to the pastes Tony Miller uses?)
4) go over linen strop
5) go over leather strop

Course was only 15€ so worth it.

Now while this gives a sharp result, I doubt it's the best you can get. Why else would all you guys use a Norton 4/8? However according to the teacher you wouldn't need anything else but the coticule and I do find that a bit strange, a coticule is pretty expensive, why buy an expensive Norton if you wouldn't need it?!

Anyway, what's the truth about it? I don't have a Norton (yet) so I can't compare and I'm currently wondering wether to buy a Norton stone combo from Amazon.com(or anywhere else you may recommend) or not.

In the course they also said that the grid of the belgian was around 8000, would that mean it would be exactly the same as the norton 8K side?

Thx.

Harold