Quote Originally Posted by BeBerlin View Post
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I also think Bart's chart to be highly useful. Of course, there will be a (more or less) high degree of subjectiveness, but let us take the following situation: If I wanted to buy a coarser hone than my Norton 1k, what would be my choices?
Anything rated coarser than 1,000? I wouldn't even try to make a list of all available hones coarser than 1,000. I think Bart's chart would also be useful, but going into that much detail is difficult when the data is so subjective. I think that very level of detail is why so few questionnaires were returned... If you make the chart too detailed then many new users might refuse to even read the chart legend. Having just a "smoothness" scale is going to be difficult because such a scale (read unit-of-measure) doesn't exist, as far as I know. [e.g.: electrical resistance has Ohms. Smoothness, outside of a surface tester's units...difficult to impossible to relate to shaving smoothness anyway.] Then there's also the question of "Sharpness vs. Smoothness".
Incidentally, this question is not answered by your progressive honing guide, either (whose hone specific comments could, of course) be used instead of the comparison chart suggested by Bart).
The progressive guide in your link is the wiki version, I don't maintain that one; never did. In the original guide posting, including the very first version (it's now at v2.1), you will find specific hones mentioned alongside their recommended uses (near the end of the thread's first post, under the "//Hone Specifics" category). I made the decision to keep the usage recommendations broad because so much of it has a high degree of broad overlap. The list I made is way too short to serve as a substitute for a chart on the scale that we're talking about here. Especially so since I make no attempt to include such high level of detail. I'd rather see the chart.

Currently, there are only two articles dedicated to specific hones: Norton, and Belgians. An article on barber hones would be highly appreciated in any event. My more or less cunning plan was to have the chart as an enlargement of the "what hone(s) do I need" article, and cross reference the hones mentioned therein to hone specific articles.
"what hone(s) do I need" sounds like a good thing to have, to me; as does a list of hones that might fit. I'm just saying that attempting to pin each hone down to very specific purposes having such high detail level is going to be rather difficult. If the questionnaire was simplified and (maybe) not put in excel format, you might get more replies. Obviously, no one owns all the hones that might be put into the chart (except maybe Randy...); so responses to questionnaires are pretty much needed. The only other option is to go by hearsay and existing posts. Another option that might get more responses is to start a thread that has multiple choice answers in a poll. (I am assuming that a poll thread would allow the needed number of questions and reply choices.)

If the questionnaire/poll gets simplified, I'll fill one out regarding the hones I've tried.