Well, tonight is about the 4th night where I've sat down with my razors and my stones and worked on learning to hone (about 2-3 hours per session).

Tonight, I finally had a breakthrough.

Several years ago, I bought a combo stone at Rockler woodworking here in Denver. When I bought it, I was totally ignorant as to what it was. Well, it turned out to be a 250/1000 Japanese waterstone. I never used it when I bought (I'm not sure what I was thinking then).

Anyway, I got these two plain old ebay razors (A genco and a Geneva Cutlery) and I could not for the life of me get them sharp.

One of my other razors was still sharp enough that I realized I could pop the hairs off my arm so-so (my head hair is too fine for HHT, I think). So if that razor could do it, then I should get the ebay razors to do it.

I tried, and tried and failed, and failed. Then I thought about that stone I had and went and got it.

Since I was so mad at these ebay dullards, I thought "I'm going to give you 10 lashings on the 250 grit followed by 10 on the 1000, 10 on the 4000 with some pressure 5 without, followed by 15 on the 8000"

So I tried that. And I'll be damned if those razors weren't popping some of the hairs. I then tried 10 laps on the 8K with some pressure letting up towards then end, then 5 more with feather touch and they cut even better. Then I stopped it for 20 laps (on a Miller strop, of course) and it was "pink-pinking" hairs like none of my other razors could.

So, of course, I gave the rest of my razors the same treatment, but leaving out the 250 stone (I didn't think I really needed to use it).

So, I'm guessing that by giving the razors some laps on the 1K, I must have reset the bevel, then worked it some more with the 4K and final polished on the 8K.

Either way, I can't wait to shave tomorrow morning!