Thread: Honing on glass

Originally Posted by Wintchase

So, when I started shaving I did what my grandfather did.. He honed on a old razor hone and then finished on a glass bottle. I did it this way until I joined this site and found Shaptons and coticules. I find that coticules work much beter. The bottle worked at the time, but learning the newer techniques definitely improved my shaves. To each their own though.. It is definitely cheaper to go with a bottle.

When all hones fails, it's time to hit the bottle!

Originally Posted by mdarnton

I spilled the beans in another thread, so I'm going to say more here.

I started one day thinking about finer and finer honing, chrome oxide, diamonds, etc., and remembered those old hones that double-edge people used to swear by in the days of carbon steel blades: concave glass and drinking glasses. I think we've all read the stories about keeping a DE carbon blade going for months by honing (burnishing? stropping?) in a drinking glass, so I started wondering how it would work on a carbon steel straight. I took a freshly honed straight (12k Naniwa, then chrome) that hadn't been stropped and a piece of glass and treated the glass just like an infinite-grit hone: some water, then some gentle rubbing as with a normal hone, followed up by more rubbing on the dry glass.

I thought the difference was pretty amazing. I think what it was doing was a harsher version of what the strop does: aligning, and perhaps burnishing, the edge, not cutting on it, and it seems to do an amazing job of that. My straight worked a lot better, and when I tried it on my violin making knives, which I have more experience with, the improvement was substantial. I posted it on a violin board, and to some friends, and they're reporting back that it works great on their knives. While I felt like my straights were just a bit short of a fresh DE blade, now they've approached that a lot closer, and I really like the way they're working.

When you think about it, if it worked well on carbon DE blades, there's no reason it wouldn't work well on straights.

It has been done before, quite a number of years ago, by guys on this forum. Don't ask me for links - haven't the time to look for them, but it was well documented at the time. One guy used the rounded edge of cars side window, if I recall correctly, and some posted photos of flat slabs of glass that were used as hones and commericailly available many, many years ago.

One of the 'factory made' glass razor hones had an etched surface - to hold extra-fine abrasive, I suppose, and the guy who posted the pictures of it posted the instruction sheet, with an offer to return the hone to the factory to acid-etch the surface again should it get worn. Come to think of it, it might even have been me posting the instruction sheet - as I said, it was quite a few years ago.

You can tell how well it caught on by the avalanche of glass hones on the market....

Regards,
Neil

I did some research on glass and discovered that it's just a bit harder than most razors would be. That would make the ground edge of a window, or a piece of ground or etched glass a type of hone all on its own, with an effective grit depending on the type of texture. I'm referring more to the polishing/burnishing effect of a smooth piece of glass, which I found to be steps up from chromium oxide on glass.

I'm still a bit perplexed by the fact that every surface I've honed on--two commercial strops, a newspaper, several random leather straps and belts---leaves scratches on a microscopic level, slowly undoing the polishing effect of higher grit things. But given what barbers used to hone on compared with now, I've pretty much decided that most of the modern honing fascination probably has more to do with spending money on stuff like fancy stones. That would certainly mimic what goes on in my own field.

I would imagine that most novaculite-type natural hones like translucent arkansas have just that effect - and have been used for many, many years too. Many of us have - or have used - one, in one or other of its incarnations.

Regards,
Neil

Glass hone small article from barbers manual. Ended up never trying this set-up as i found other threads with average results.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/hones...ass-hones.html