How many passes on chromium?

How many passes should i do to refresh a dull edge?
what about one that shaves ok...just to make it sharper?
can i over do it?
thank you

I'm sorry but I don't believe anyone can answer those questions, except yes, you can over do it. :(

For the rest, there are too many unknowns. How heavy is the paste? How dull is the edge? I think that you will find it a matter of trial and error. I suppose eventually, with experience, you will develop a "feel" for it.

Perhaps one of the honemeister's can provide a suggestion of how to start. :shrug:

I haven't had any problem with doing 30 passes. It did not over-hone and made the edge nice and smooth.

bj

It depends on the state of the edge when you start. 30 is probably a good figure but maybe only 10 are required. If you need much more than 30 maybe you should consider refreshing on a hone.

I used to do sets of 10, for me more than 30 was overkill. I evaluated every 10 to see how it was going. That is when I use it (its not too often). Now, without sounding overconfident/cocky, I don't use .5 to sharpen the edge, I can do that on a stone. I use it to polish the edge to create a smoother shave, so when I use it, I use fewer strokes.

Just like stropping I use as few strokes as possible. I keep a very conservative approach except on a finishing stone. Often I only do 6 strokes on the .5. I'd say I use .5 paste about 50% of the time, rarely for my own razors, which I prefer to be smoother and to last longer between honings rather than when I was a newbie, or honing an edge for someone else and was/am all hyped up on sharpness.

I sometimes do 30 laps on my chromium oxide paddle with a freshly honed razor for some extra smoothness. However, my paddle strop has only faint traces of paste on it. If you have a pretty good green tint to the whole surface, I'd probably do 10 to 20 laps max before testing. When applied heavily to the strop, chromium oxide does a pretty good job of killing edges. Lightly applied, it's magic. :)

Josh

When I had a chromium paddle strop, I would do 10
laps at a time. Any more than that would risk over-
honing the razor (this was generally after around a 12k
stone).

- Scott

Thank you guys!:tu