So my supply of synth Barbers hones is winding down considerably.. as I'm emptying out my collection more than buying lots of hones and for the most part barber's synths are one of the first things to go... and my willingness to pay $20+ just to test a hone that is unlikely to be good has definitely faded.
I think the next logical step is a shave grading/ranking system across my collection of finishers.
Lessons learned and things I'll probably incorporate:
Two-tier grading seems to work. I'd like to keep it that way. Comfort and Closeness (or some metric which reflects this) seem to be the ideal two. Scoring out of 50 will hopefully be unnecessary, as the lower half or better of that scale was purposeless, so it seems like contracting that to 0-20 rankings and assigning known qualities to those rankings (say DMT 220 grit shave = 0 and my best ever shave = 20), with the potential to extend above and below (negative scores for particularly bad shaves and over 20 if any new bests arise)
In my first Barbers Hone reviews I went by hours of shave, which though mostly objective, required a great deal of time to pass after each shave before scoring AND myself to check regularly to note when my beard returned. On the other hand, it can take ~1 hr after a shave for my skin to fully settle and the final degree of smoothness from the shave to be apparent. Checking immediately after the shave, five minutes after, and then an hour after seems to be able to give a solid representation of how close the shave is; and after all three checks, a closeness grade, also numerical and likely in the realm of a 0-20 range (again representing a notably scruffy result but not completely failed shave at the low end and an extremely close shave at the high end and with the ability to move beyond each).
To facilitate this and give these results meaning and readability... I'm thinking of plotting them on an excel scatterplot.
This allows me to address a complaint I personally have had with my reviews... the mundanity of having to use identical razors each time. Changing this will allow me test and score with multiple razors and group them according to finisher. While razors definitely have an impact on the shave; with good razors and good hones, the finish will tend to be the more significant of the two, and the variance from the razors can be significant and meaningful. Do some hones work much better with harder or softer steels? That's information that could be important and isn't possible to be demonstrated without changing razors.
As I've been shaving for over a decade now and settled onto soaps and brushes I like, those will have minimal if any impact. With the goal that the data can be expanded nearly infinitely (I'll try to sort finishes in a logical way... probably alphabetical, so adding new results will be as simple as inserting a new row within that finishes grouping), the idea is that charts will be generated where particular finishers form their own group of scores, and we can see each finisher as capable of a range within regular use by a honer and shaver familiar with them... then compare these ranges against each other for a much more meaningful idea of what a hone offers when used regularly and not simple to produce a single finish by which it will be judged.
What won't be present in here are anything but a small selection of the very best Barber's hones, which I've kept and might actually use on a regular basis. So there won't be much if any cross-over from my previous reviews which were more looking for what's usable in a realm of mostly junk. This will be ranking results from a selection of proven and capable hones.
The big challenge I foresee are mystery hones. I have more than a few unidentified hones that I use quite regularly. My proposed idea for the start is to simply photograph any hone used for its first use, label it and provide key details if available. This will mean for instance, Coticules, where two or more very distinct examples may be used would not both contribute to a single Coticule score but rather one might be
Coticule 1 and be described as an unbacked stone affixed with white cement in a mahogany box, with a picture and the next Coticule 2 and be described as a nat combo brown hybrid and yellow stone in a rosewood box with inlays, hybrid side used with a picture. Then a Mystery hone might say the cut, any identifying features, where it was sourced (ebay.fr, ebay.uk, etc) and a picture.
How to structure and present the information becomes the question. A simple thread would likely get too cluttered to make accessing the information easily. Obviously the charts/data can be presented as an excel file. I'm thinking possibly a .ppt or some converted file format from a .ppt with each hone on a slide as a cataloging of the hones used, and then provide links to where these two things can be accessed in the first post, then simply update and reupload as necessary; keeping all the relevant information available in the initial post.
Then the final thing I need to sort out is what all information (columns) I want in the excel.
Obviously the finisher, the comfort, the closeness
Then I'm thinking razor grind
Razor make & Model
Steel region
Manufacture region
This is going to take awhile to get going and will be pieced together in my free time... but I expect to be able to work on it a bit this summer, and hopefully get at least a seedling of both the excel and hone listing with a dozen or so entries ready for viewing in the coming month or two.
If anyone has any ideas for improvements on what I've proposed, additional information they'd like to see included in the spreadsheet, etc. post them here.
I think the next logical step is a shave grading/ranking system across my collection of finishers.
Lessons learned and things I'll probably incorporate:
Two-tier grading seems to work. I'd like to keep it that way. Comfort and Closeness (or some metric which reflects this) seem to be the ideal two. Scoring out of 50 will hopefully be unnecessary, as the lower half or better of that scale was purposeless, so it seems like contracting that to 0-20 rankings and assigning known qualities to those rankings (say DMT 220 grit shave = 0 and my best ever shave = 20), with the potential to extend above and below (negative scores for particularly bad shaves and over 20 if any new bests arise)
In my first Barbers Hone reviews I went by hours of shave, which though mostly objective, required a great deal of time to pass after each shave before scoring AND myself to check regularly to note when my beard returned. On the other hand, it can take ~1 hr after a shave for my skin to fully settle and the final degree of smoothness from the shave to be apparent. Checking immediately after the shave, five minutes after, and then an hour after seems to be able to give a solid representation of how close the shave is; and after all three checks, a closeness grade, also numerical and likely in the realm of a 0-20 range (again representing a notably scruffy result but not completely failed shave at the low end and an extremely close shave at the high end and with the ability to move beyond each).
To facilitate this and give these results meaning and readability... I'm thinking of plotting them on an excel scatterplot.
This allows me to address a complaint I personally have had with my reviews... the mundanity of having to use identical razors each time. Changing this will allow me test and score with multiple razors and group them according to finisher. While razors definitely have an impact on the shave; with good razors and good hones, the finish will tend to be the more significant of the two, and the variance from the razors can be significant and meaningful. Do some hones work much better with harder or softer steels? That's information that could be important and isn't possible to be demonstrated without changing razors.
As I've been shaving for over a decade now and settled onto soaps and brushes I like, those will have minimal if any impact. With the goal that the data can be expanded nearly infinitely (I'll try to sort finishes in a logical way... probably alphabetical, so adding new results will be as simple as inserting a new row within that finishes grouping), the idea is that charts will be generated where particular finishers form their own group of scores, and we can see each finisher as capable of a range within regular use by a honer and shaver familiar with them... then compare these ranges against each other for a much more meaningful idea of what a hone offers when used regularly and not simple to produce a single finish by which it will be judged.
What won't be present in here are anything but a small selection of the very best Barber's hones, which I've kept and might actually use on a regular basis. So there won't be much if any cross-over from my previous reviews which were more looking for what's usable in a realm of mostly junk. This will be ranking results from a selection of proven and capable hones.
The big challenge I foresee are mystery hones. I have more than a few unidentified hones that I use quite regularly. My proposed idea for the start is to simply photograph any hone used for its first use, label it and provide key details if available. This will mean for instance, Coticules, where two or more very distinct examples may be used would not both contribute to a single Coticule score but rather one might be
Coticule 1 and be described as an unbacked stone affixed with white cement in a mahogany box, with a picture and the next Coticule 2 and be described as a nat combo brown hybrid and yellow stone in a rosewood box with inlays, hybrid side used with a picture. Then a Mystery hone might say the cut, any identifying features, where it was sourced (ebay.fr, ebay.uk, etc) and a picture.
How to structure and present the information becomes the question. A simple thread would likely get too cluttered to make accessing the information easily. Obviously the charts/data can be presented as an excel file. I'm thinking possibly a .ppt or some converted file format from a .ppt with each hone on a slide as a cataloging of the hones used, and then provide links to where these two things can be accessed in the first post, then simply update and reupload as necessary; keeping all the relevant information available in the initial post.
Then the final thing I need to sort out is what all information (columns) I want in the excel.
Obviously the finisher, the comfort, the closeness
Then I'm thinking razor grind
Razor make & Model
Steel region
Manufacture region
This is going to take awhile to get going and will be pieced together in my free time... but I expect to be able to work on it a bit this summer, and hopefully get at least a seedling of both the excel and hone listing with a dozen or so entries ready for viewing in the coming month or two.
If anyone has any ideas for improvements on what I've proposed, additional information they'd like to see included in the spreadsheet, etc. post them here.
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