Thread: Beginning to get why honemeisters charge extra for wedges...

To the OP, most of the instruction that is out there is done on razors in decent shape. This is meant to help teach new guys the fundamentals of honing so that they can learn with practice and become successful. The biggest problem is that many of the razors new guys take on are tough to hone razors even for experienced people. We have done videos on rolling X strokes and other techniques that try to provide alternatives to these tough razors but nothing takes away from the time and practice needed to be able to get some of these beasts shaving again. I have yet to see the person who can take a badly unevenly flattened razor where the spine wear and reflective bevel wear don't match on both sides be able to hone that razor up to shaving glory in 15 minutes no matter what technique they use. Sometimes these nasty razors can be quite frustrating even if you have honed thousands of razors and they can take hours and multiple sittings to produce a shaving edge.

So to me, this is the challenge. You can become more frustrated with a razor and at the end of the day maybe never get it where it needs to be or spend the time to eventually start producing good results consistently. I pretty much look at every one of these razors as a challenge and get a lot of satisfaction in getting each one of them to shave. That's easy for me to say now as it took years of frustration and time to get to this point and I have put many a razor away to come back to at a later time.

There is no perfect answer when it comings to honing razors. The razors are as different as each of us and our abilities in addition to all the available media and regiments out there. Personally, I think a lot of the old wedges made it to peoples drawers and storage trunks as a result of not being able to hone them and shave with them.

In any case, hang in there. The more you take on these kinds of razors the better you will get with all the honing you do.

Have fun.