Thread: Looking for BBW honing advice

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Reading your post I feel as if the information you sourced is meant for someone who only has a BBW. If that is the case they can try the suggested method. IME, having quite a few naturals, I gave up messing with the BBW side long ago. Just wasn't worth the effort when the yellow side is so much more effective, not to mention many, many other alternative stones that are more efficient in getting 'there'.

Your assumption is a right one, the idea behind it is allowing very cheap honing. Since I'm on a student's budget, I went for it.

BBW is one of precious few naturals I had fairly quick success on. Sharpness could compare w/ the Nani 8 (which is a nice shave), but the feel was harsh. A few strokes on yellow afterwards left a decent shaver.

While some (very few, I think), take to a coti or other natural right away, its not the majority. IMHO, the synthetic is the preferred learning tool. 'Wish it were more affordable. FWIW, a Nani 8 (or 12) finish after that BBW should tame the harshness w/ minimal investment - or the Norton 4/8.

One thing I didn't notice was what kind of razor. If you mentioned it, I didn't notice. If we're trying to hone a well worn Sheffield wedge - I could understand.

Maybe it would help to see if any members are near you? It can be *very* helpful to have the face to face time, get to compare edges from different hones, etc.

'Best of luck w/ the edge.

Hello to All,

Please have a peek here :

http://www.coticule.be/heritage.html

The article 'Belgian Blue Whetstone - a study about its aptness for razor sharpening (343.9 KiB) ' has some information about comparative complete honing on a BBW.

Have fun !

Best regards

Russ

Originally Posted by PhatMan

Hello to All,

Please have a peek here :

http://www.coticule.be/heritage.html

The article 'Belgian Blue Whetstone - a study about its aptness for razor sharpening (343.9 KiB) ' has some information about comparative complete honing on a BBW.

Have fun !

Best regards

Russ

Not exactly impartial opinions there, me thinks.

Just something to keep in mind if you peruse that.

I still dont understand why someone would ignore the fact that Ardennes grades the stone as 4k.

Because naturals can be "maxed out" when playing with slurry thickness, pressure and tape. Synthetics have that quality to a lesser extent, in my experience, which I assume is due to their consistent particle size, high cutting speed and lack of slurry. JMHO.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Not exactly impartial opinions there, me thinks.

Just something to keep in mind if you peruse that.

An impartial opinion on honing with any sort of stone is hard to find, in my experience. But that doesn't render these opinions necessarily unreliable or unhelpful.

Blind tests make it more difficult to have a prejudice opinion shine through in the end result, even small scaled ones.

They mention the experiment's shortcomings. It is prejudice insofar that BBW were compared against coticule edges and not other hones.

The main object of the experiment was to to see whether or not BBW can provide a comfortable shaving edge, comparable to an edge off a yellow coticule.

Either way you look at it, it is undeniably valuable information for people interested in razor honing on a BBW.

Man, do I love our little SRP database - a real treasure throwe of information.

Although I've had had a couple of different hones for some time now, I never really have serious thought to honing as I wanted to get my straight razor shaving down to an acceptable level first. One of those hones, and my very first one at that, was a BBW (I guess I felt very partial to a stone from the Ardennes as I am myself from that area, but on the other side of one of the borders...) Anyhow, I digress...

Back to topic: So, just a few days ago, I decided it was time for me to get my head around honing as I would really like to be able to maintain my own razors. There I was chatting with a fellow straight shaver from the Land of the Celts and the Dragons and he told me he was using Naniwas. So I start looking at them (and of course also at Nortons and the like, just to compare) when I was thinking "Man, I am sure my BBW would make for a nice finishing stone." Maybe I should have left it at the initial thinking and starting to read up on the topic instead of sharing my assumed and totally unfounded wisdom with the aforementioned fellow member of this fine community. And I am rather glad I came across this and a few other threads on the topic of the BBW, AFTER I have made a complete fool of myself but luckily before I started any actual honing... I still wonder why I was thinking the BBW was a suitable finisher.

I like natural stones, always have (and am not talking about hones only but most definitely exclude the Kidney variety, they are no fun...) but after reading that the BBW is more or less a 4K stone, I have decided to go for a set of synthetics (Naniwas, as I like to buy local or Regional and Japan is 'only' about 6 hours North from here...).

To cut a long story short (and I am sure you are all wondering what I am rambling on about) - I am really glad and would like to say 'Thank you' for all the imparted knowledge and shared experiences here on SRP, all readily available if one looks.

Originally Posted by Smoothy

I still wonder why I was thinking the BBW was a suitable finisher.

I like natural stones, always have (and am not talking about hones only but most definitely exclude the Kidney variety, they are no fun...) but after reading that the BBW is more or less a 4K stone, I have decided to go for a set of synthetics (Naniwas, as I like to buy local or Regional and Japan is 'only' about 6 hours North from here...).

To cut a long story short (and I am sure you are all wondering what I am rambling on about) - I am really glad and would like to say 'Thank you' for all the imparted knowledge and shared experiences here on SRP, all readily available if one looks.

And still I will say that, if the honing and sharpening preceding the BBW is adequate, you can use a BBW as a finisher with no problems. Lots of ifs and buts of course, but to say it is and cannot be a finisher (as in 'providing a comfortable yet sharp edge', I'm not talking 'Well, you can also shave off a brick if you want' here), is just silly. I have used BBW on very thin slurry after coticules without noticing any deterioration of the edge. Just my experience.

What kind of edge can you get off a housing brick?

Is this a serious question? Not sure....

I have some old knives I could try on a brick....

Jody