Another Thought on Honing Japanese Razors

[ISaid]

I thought I'd put this in a new thread.

With all the different thoughts on honing Japanese razors I decided to contact the man who sold me mine. I posed questions to him about ratios. I requested from him to contact the Iwasaki makers to get an authoritative quote on the recommended ratio, if any, from this most respected company - seeing he has contacts with them; I did not get that, but I did get a response. The owner of aframestokyo.com seems like a knowledgable fellow on matters of sharpening Japanese steels, with much, much, much more experience than myself. Japanese Chef Knives

Here was his response:

"Thank you for the mail.
Many people have confused what is right and what is not right.

Actually, I think that they are all right, as long as the blade edge is sharp enough to sharpen beard.

How to sharpen Japanese single bevel edge cutlery are almost the same or very similar such as cooking kinfe, and chisel and plane, and Japanese razor.

I do not want to involve to the issue how to sharpen Japanese straight razor.

Many people has many way to sharpen the blade edge is fine like diversity.

However, it is waste time and waste Hagane to sharpen 7：3 for flat back side (hagane side).

Once the back side get super fine mirror finish (it is like to see 30 times loupe, but it is still beautiful straight line. it should be hard work), we do not need sharpen the back side.
All we have to do is to remove sliding the blade several times (on the back side blade on the stone) coming up metal (beard) from the front side after sharpned the front side.


Iwasaki razors comes out from factory the quality can cut a hair when we hold on thumb and index finger from 1/4 inch with bottom side of hair on the top.

It is good enough to sharve our beard, but if we want to cut a hair when we hold on thumb and index finger from 1 1/4" with bottom side of hair on the top,
we have to have 3 of whetsones, a whetstone for correction whetstone.
It is very detail work and we have to deal with 3/1000mm world.

Thank you.

Takeshi"

From what I can make of it these razors are of the same concept as a single bevel chef knife which is designed to cut on one side. In theory the blade only needs to be sharpened on one side. The only purpose of a ratio for the other side would be to avoid a burr from forming. So the ratio of 3:1 or even Lynn's 10:1 ratio would be correct. I will be trying Lynn's recommendation as this seems logical. I like the washboard motion/method and feel anyway.

Happy Honing. — Jules