Thread: Will a barber hone do the trick?

I find that while stropping on newspaper can be very effective (it's almost always the last thing I do after polishing a razor on stones and before the first pre-test shave leather stropping), it's slow. I've also used newspaper, both unaltered and also rubbed with a small amount of chromium oxide powder to refresh an edge. A approximate account of the number of round trip laps I find work well for me would be:

Plain newspaper: At least 50 laps minimum, and more often up to 100.
Newspaper dry rubbed with chromium oxide powder: 20-50 laps.

I use an extremely small amount of powder that really only "kisses" the newspaper in a handful of random areas. Then, it's rubbed in very well. The "X" pattern of stropping takes care of the rest. I tape two layers of newspaper very tightly to a lapped Chinese 12K stone. With this method, I did an experiment a few months ago, purposely trying to create a wire edge on a 4/8ths "silver steel" german razor (Korte brand). 100 laps on the chrome ox newspaper each night with a shave each morning. After one week and 700 laps with the same razor, comfortable shaves and no wire edge. It simply seemed to plateau rather than yield a razor 7x sharper than when I started. I am not a big fan of chrome on hanging strops since I have definitely found edge rounding to be a real factor; not so with stropping on the flat chromed newspaper.

Chris L

Wait for your strop to arrive. If it has a linen side do say 60 laps on the linen then 60 on the leather and see how it shaves. I usually do 40 on the linen and 60 on the leather but as your razor has become somewhat dull I recommend you do a few more on the linen. Remember to pull the strop taut and apply little pressure, never lift the spine off the leather.

If all that does not do the trick you may want to try your barber hone. After honing I usually do 15 on the linen and 60 on the leather.

Thanks guys.

I think my problem is that I ordered the razor factory sharp and not hand honed. Personall I think I may have been stretching it to get 5 shaves out of it without stropping, really.