New bench hone from Tony

I just received a new bench hone from Tony the other day. Ordered it in 3" with the handle added. Smooth leather + 0.5 on one side, balsa + 0.25 on the other.

Typical Tony quality - I'm very pleased. I used it on my favorite C. Fried Schmidt 6/8 Revisor from John Crowley, and got a great shave this morning.

I like this configuration much better than the narrower 4-sided paddle.

I have a new 100x microscope coming in the mail. Once it's here and I get one of my good razors to the best edge I can achieve... I'm going to play around a bit with pasted paddle vs. pasted linen vs. barber hone to see how long I can go before needing to hit the Norton.

Whoops... meant for this to go in Honing. Sorry mods.

Moved to Strops as a bench hone is really a type of a sharpening strop. Enjeux :nj

I'm considering getting the 3" bench hone with 1.0 diamond paste and 0.5 Cr02, but there are so many choices.

I prefer not to use the X-motion with my 3" wide norton, so I think I would be better suited with the 3" wide bench hone from TM instead of the more narrow 4-sided paddle. Right?

There are too many choices, I'd buy one of each if I could afford it!

Everyone has their preferences, but unless you're using strops in place of a Norton or barber hones, I think the 4 sided paddle is overkill.

1/.5 or .5/.25 for finishing is nice. My daily users are relatively hard steel, so I like the .25 finish. Others find it leaves too fragile an edge and only finish with .5.

So, maybe the 4-sided isn't overkill if you like to experiment. :)