Thread: My first hone result with pictures

Originally Posted by kwlfca

I would listen to everyone's advice here if I were you. I can tell you, as someone who's recently started to hone and can finally get an edge that will shave somewhat decently, my edge is still crap compared to an edge that someone more experienced can get.
In regards to two handed honing, IIRC Glen hones with two hands but only uses the second hand to guide. Speaking as someone who also uses two hands for the exact same reason as you described, pressure is something that you will have to CONSTANTLY be aware of. You need to make sure that your second hand isn't using any pressure...sounds obvious, I know, but it's REALLY easy to let your hands do their own thing instead of focusing on the evenness of your honing stroke. Your guiding hand needs to be like a feather, just hardly there, otherwise you'll wear the toe more than the heel and then you'll be wishing you didn't use your prized razor to learn to hone on! :P I wish you the best of luck. Learning to hone is a huge pain that is at times full of hours of backbreaking frustration (my table is low :P ) but at the end it's a sweet feeling when you get an edge that you can shave with comfortably!
Have fun!

I hear you. Yes I am trying to take it all in. I have received a lot of good advice thanks to all. It has reset my mind with the correct approach.
I shaved again with the edge you saw on the picture (without re-hone yet) just to have 2 shave tests on it. It felt harsher than yesterday and left me with some hurt skin. It feels as far from a good shave as it looks on these picture.

I am now learning to stroke on the 2000 hone with zero pressure. I balanced the center of gravity of the razor between index and thumb and took 40 seconds to do 1 stroke . Doing it so slowly i got the exact feeling of the edge staying perfectly parallel. The water suction on the edge helped. I repeated this on both sides for the next hour (0 pressure and zero mistakes). I used slurry. My plan is to keep doing this for as many days as it takes to get the bevel to pass HHT. As of now it fails HHT but passes AHT close to the skin.

I am sure my blade has no nicks, but I think looking at it while I was going I think it is arched like a bow. It seemed that the toe was not making full contact with the stone on one side. I could be wrong on that. I will try the pen test to see if that is the case.