Thread: 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.

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!