Hard lessons in honing

[sydres]

In life I have had many difficult lessons sometimes because of circumstance and sometimes because of my own ignorance, or my stubbornness.
Having been shaving with a straight razor for the last eight or nine years I made the fateful decision to learn to hone at the same time.
Starting with a cheap Chinese water stone I struggled, duh of course I did. After lapping it flat though I could get an edge to shave after a sort, not well or comfortably but it would take off hair, irritate skin, and do blood letting all in one go.
Later I came in to possession of a coticule and was able to get my first pain free shave. Dilucot became my go to honing method, but it still wasn't perfect!
It was at this time the addiction began, many of you would recognize it. I scoured flea markets, antique stores, the big digital Bay looking for the next hit, er hone. I bought stones, bid on stones, even flattened a stone I found in my landscaping, all in pursuit of the all-shaving edge.
One of those lessons came recently. I had found a couple of deals on a couple of King stones, a 1k/6k, and a G-1 8k finishing stone.
Grabbing my "Robeson's best" razor I set a bevel, worked it up to 8k. I always do a quick arm hair test between hones to judge progress and all seemed well till I took it to the translucent Arkansas stone I like to "finish" on. At this time I need to stress that "finish" is in quotes as after finishing on it I found that the razor no longer cut hair comfortable. So back to the 8k it went and after the Arkansas it was once again obvious the edge was bad.
Deciding to experiment I took the razor back to the 8k and instead of my no name translucent I finished on my Norton 4x1 translucent HB14. Bang just like that the edge was screaming sharp.
I shaved with that razor and it felt like nothing on my skin but I had the best shave I have had in all the time I have been shaving with a straight razor.
I decided to investigate what could have gone wrong and really looked over the no name Arkansas. Turns out that when I flattened it my food enough just wasn't good enough. So back to lapping it went now I'm suffering from an inflamed elbow but I got a flat stone out of it that finishes beautiful.
My second lesson is that apparently my dilucot technique isn't up to snuff and I'm deeply annoyed with that. I suspect all of this could have been avoided if I had just sent a razor out for honing.

 

[Mr Kooby Shemayrew]

I have a particular pocket stone 3”x1” black Ark from a respected brand. It appears to be high quality but it likes to eat edges. It will remove a good edge in very short order. It is quite peculiar. I wonder if I am somehow going against the grain on it or something. Maybe it would improve if I lapped the crap out of it. Not sure.

 

[psfred]

Lol, what's the fun in sending something out? Now you can buy cheap razors on eBay and whip them into top condition shavers all by yourself!

Arks are an art, there is a lot to the condition of the surface of the stone when it comes to refining an edge, you can make a translucent VERY coarse cutting by leaving it rough, or super fine finisher by burnishing it until it reflects light. Grain size is the same, it's all about how much it sticks up. They must be completely flat, or very slightly covex or you rip the edge up going over the edge of the stone or don't polish the edge of the razor past the very toe and heel.

Get a cheap USB microscope, it will help enormously. Even a good triplet 20 or 30X hand lens makes setting bevels and checking edge condition much easier.

I'm learning coticules at the moment, have four to play with. Probably set bevels on my Bester 1200, it's a wonderful stone, but finish on a coticule with light slurry going to running water. Again, a good hand lens or USB microscope will help you figure out what's going on as you work the edge. Slurry after setting a bevel may not help you any, and not all coticules are good razor stones.

 

[sydres]

It's not a lesson in wether one should or should not do something, but in admitting you are doing something the wrong way! Sometimes things that aren't important to others and are of no significant consequence lend them selves to creating a false sense of certainty. We might only have to answer to ourselves that we are wrong but stubbornly refusing to acknowledge it leads to complacency.
I own a dozen or so hones that can make a razor work, a vintage diamond grading stereo microscope and many loups to look at an edge. I own probably eight razors of various ages and makes. With all of this I never sent one to be honed so I don't have a baseline of what a truly sharp edge should be. My takeaway from my original post is that it would have saved me time, effort and money to have just sent one out before trying to hone my own So I knew what to expect. Also the equipment we use is only as good as the dummy using it!

 

[Christian1212]

With honing I feel like the most common problems are
1. Stone is not flat ( Imo diamond plate is just a must unless you are using arks)
2. Cheap equipment/ budget stones. (Good ol Amazon stones, Chinese 12k, random slate stones, etc).
3. Bevel not being set correctly.

Definitely a lot of wasted money on the budget stones from what I have seen over time.

 

[lightfoot]

My biggest mistake was continuing to hone my 1st razor that had poor underlying geometry issues.

Instead of focusing on getting a few pre-honed & vetted GD’s on the way I foolishly because fixated on more and more stones when my 1st set of stones were actually appropriate…

Another problem was not developing adequate skills in terms of verifying a set bevel early on.

There were more problems but most of those were offshoots of the two mentioned here.

 

[sydres]

These are valid points I certainly bought cheap water stones, but I also came to possess a coticule fairly early instead of learning how to use the coticule properly I accepted subpar performance, and continued to chase more stones looking for magic. I enjoy the hunt for new stones but I was at a stage I should have been learning technique. I think many razor users can probably relate to this. With the King stones, even though they aren't high end stones they took a lot of the guessing out of the process and gave me a new standard. Proper preparation of equipment is suddenly a lot more important to my process hence I re lapped the Arkansas and checked it against multiple known flat surfaces. I think for myself even if I had started with the greatest razor hone of all times I would have still stumbled around blindly.

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

It is not really “that” difficult, and we, the fora make it much more difficult than it needs to be.

All you need is a good quality coarse stone, a good finisher and perhaps some paste like Chrome oxide in the .50um range, for better comfort.

The biggest “mistake” new honers make is not fully setting the bevel. A fully set bevel is flat, from heel to toe, in the correct bevel angle and meeting fully from heel to toe.

The trick is how do you know? There are a host of test, that you must calibrate for yourself. Calibrate, understand when a test passes, and more importantly when it does not.

The simplest “test” is to look straight down on the edge with low magnification. If you see shiny reflections, the bevels are not meeting. Joint the edge and hone on the bevel setter until you do not see shiny reflections.

Once the bevels are meeting fully, then remove all the deep stria with the following stone to refine the edge. A 1k, 4-6k and 8-12k progression is all you need, and you can drop the mid grit and jump straight to 8-12k if your technique is good. It can be done but for a new honer not recommended.

Where guys fail, is not getting the bevels to meet fully at bevel set and not removing all the deep bevel setting stria fully.

A pro hone razor will teach you nothing except what your razor is capable of. The question most new guys ask is, “how do I know when I am finished at each grit”.

Google (My Second Try at Honing). It is a long post of a new honer, the second razor he had honed, with excellent micrographs of his bevels at each step of the progression.

All you need to do is make your bevels look like his bevels at each step of the progression. He did not use any magic stones, I think he used a Norton 1,4 & 8K, finished on a Naniwa 12k.

Almost set

Fully Set

 

[sydres]

My point isn't that it has to be hard. You can set your bevel perfectly but no one is going to want to shave with a 1k edge or a 4k edge for that matter but being able to shave with an edge even if it's fairly comfortable doesn't mean anything if the shave is sub standard. My problem wasn't in the bevel setting stage it came later it when it came to pre-finish or finish either it was was setting it back or not maximizing. If all one needed to shave was the bevel set no one would buy the expensive stones. And using the microscope to judge an edge isn't perfect because of optical resolution limitation. The best microscope (oil stage) resolve down to about .2 microns roughly the same as the width of the razor edge. Less magnification means less ability to resolve small flaws in the edge.
It goes right back to even if you have good tools they are only as good as the dummy operating them. I was that dummy! Am that dummy!

 

[Steve56]

As long as you’re learning, you’ll get there, you’re not a dummy!

 

[sydres]

My end of this whole discussion has been tongue in cheek, of course I'm not a dummy. What started as and was meant to be a humorous introspective look at seems to have grown into a very interesting conversation. But I do think we can both take things too seriously and miss our mark and also be blinded by our own ignorance in the knowledge sense of the term.

 

[Steve56]

Ha ha, I agree.

However, someone else may post a similar thread and be completely serious about it. This is one of the limitations of the written word, not to mention the lack of understanding of humor, sarcasm, etc.

Good luck on your journey!

 

[psfred]

That is certainly true, I've eaten lots of crow. Woodworking is the same, I've learned to make test pieces out of pine (which is easy to work and cheap) before I commit good wood and a lot of effort into something I've not done before.

It's all learning, and good for keeping the brain working and all. However, it is a good idea to learn each step, and I'm terrible at jumping ahead and having to go back and start over again.

And I have way too many stones.....

 

[Steve56]

And I have way too many stones.....

I don’t understand this concept ….

 

[Kyle89]

I suspect all of this could have been avoided if I had just sent a razor out for honing.

Gross!!

I'm sure all of us can resonate with your first sentence LOL

Honestly if I found honing easy I wouldn't have stuck with it.

 

[Gamma]

I'm always challenging myself so I am constantly learning new 'lessons'.
Some things are learned easily, some are more difficult.
When I don't make a big deal out of it, even the more difficult stuff goes easier usually.

As for having decent gear, flat stones, and practice - yes, yes, and yes.

 

[sydres]

I think in all things there is great benefit to challenging one self. And I believe that there are a good many things we should be certain about, but sometimes its healthy to question ourselves. Oftentimes that eureka moment isn't just about the breakthrough it might also be the realization that we have been wrong

 

[psfred]

Lol, like when we had two visits from the service people and had corporate engineers scratching their heads because I put a valve in an instrument JUST far enough off of correct to make it act really weird? That made me feel really smart!

And there is nothing wrong with King "mud" stones once you learn to use them. They will teach you to keep your stones flat though. OK for razors, nothing but trouble for plane irons.

 

[sydres]

I work with technology built around what is essentially a particle accelerator to melt high purity metals certain components need rebuilt about every other week. While rebuilding them they need to be within fairly tight tolerance to behave as expected. Unfortunately the equipment is decades old and getting it just right has become somewhat of an act of gut feeling. When it's right things are great, when they wrong we can spend days trying to sort out the issue. As far as the King stones go what they have taught me is that what I had accepted as good enough out of my razors was not really good enough. I need to go back to the coticule and really learn how to use them properly.

 

[psfred]

Lol, I have five coticules now, surely one of them is the magic one that will hone my razors.....