What did you hone today?

[Matt O]

Well...it’s honed and ready to roll tomorrow. This was a very easy razor to sharpen. I killed the edge, started on the Chosera 1k, and the bevel was set in no time. It moved through the stones well, and didn’t produce a whole lot of swarf...yet at the same time it was quite easy to get the edge where I think it needs to be for the shave. As with my other 14s...the HHT wasn’t even fair for the hair!

I am looking forward to its initial shave!

Vr

Matt

 

[alex1921]

Finally got out of town for few days and after returning I retouched the Yasuki razor. Did suita with DN slurry and finished with kiita tomo slurry on this kiita. So far this stone has worked amazingly with stainless steel Friodurs, a Dr. Balfanz and it seems it really like yasuki steel as well. Next step is an early 1800's razor.

Lake Superior sunset:

 

[Time2Shave]

Razor #2 off this jnat

 

[Tomo]

I earned a few more honing stripes yesterday by taking the smile out of my vintage MK31. It wasn’t an easy decision to make as these old vintage blades are so precious.

My previous pasted balsa method was flexible enough to hide the problems. The wide flat stones I’ve been using lately though don’t have any give. As a result I was struggling to maintain the edge in the heel and toe. There just wasn’t any contact with the stone.

With a heavy heart I breadknifed the edge nice and straight. I did most of the grunt work on the bevel with a taped spine and took the tape off it the final stages.

It took me two attempts to get the bevel right but it turned out pretty well. I’m now getting good contact on the whole edge. I lost a bit metal even though I mitigated that as much as I could. It’s a big improvement and I think the old girl deserved a face lift. Not the greatest edge yet but it shaves well along the entire blade.

Before this I had only made ‘shave ready’ edges truely shave ready. This was a little more involved.

 

[Matt O]

I earned a few more honing stripes yesterday by taking the smile out of my vintage MK31. It wasn’t an easy decision as these old blades are so rare and valuable.

My previous pasted balsa method was flexible enough to hide the problem. The wide flat stones I’ve been using lately though don’t have any give. As a result I was struggling to maintain the edge in the heel and toe.

With a heavy heart I breadknifed the edge nice and straight. I did most of the grunt work on the bevel with a taped spine and took the tape off it the final stages.

It took me two attempts to get the bevel right but it turned out pretty well. I’m now getting good contact on the whole edge. I lost a bit metal even though I mitigated that as much as I could. It’s a big improvement and I think the old girl deserved a face lift. Not the greatest edge yet but it shaves well along the entire blade.

Before this I had only made ‘shave ready’ edges truely shave ready. This was a little more involved.

Man has to do what a man has to do! I have had a few hone battles with some fairly expensive razors...less pristine to the eye now...but delivering pristine shaves! They are tools, and I use em as such!

Well done!

Vr

Matt

 

[global_dev]

I earned a few more honing stripes yesterday by taking the smile out of my vintage MK31. It wasn’t an easy decision to make as these old vintage blades are so precious.

My previous pasted balsa method was flexible enough to hide the problems. The wide flat stones I’ve been using lately though don’t have any give. As a result I was struggling to maintain the edge in the heel and toe. There just wasn’t any contact with the stone.

With a heavy heart I breadknifed the edge nice and straight. I did most of the grunt work on the bevel with a taped spine and took the tape off it the final stages.

It took me two attempts to get the bevel right but it turned out pretty well. I’m now getting good contact on the whole edge. I lost a bit metal even though I mitigated that as much as I could. It’s a big improvement and I think the old girl deserved a face lift. Not the greatest edge yet but it shaves well along the entire blade.

Before this I had only made ‘shave ready’ edges truely shave ready. This was a little more involved.

any reason you didnt hone it to keep the smile? Outside of balsa maintenance?

 

[Tomo]

any reason you didnt hone it to keep the smile? Outside of balsa maintenance?

The smile on this razor was a result of previous poor honing technique and not a design feature. It shaved well enough off the balsa which managed to sharpen the whole length of the blade so I left it alone. On the stones I wasn’t able to get good contact with the first and last quarter of the blade. I could kind of get there with x-strokes but this was only compounding the existing issues and not fixing them. It also didn’t do much for the heel. I probably would have had better success with thinner stones. All of mine are 3” wide. She started life straight and now she is straight again. I think that’s how it was designed to be. I probably took 1mm of the centre of the blade to match the toe and heel. I think the razor is better for it.

 

[global_dev]

The smile on this razor was a result of previous poor honing technique and not a design feature. It shaved well enough off the balsa which managed to sharpen the whole length of the blade so I left it alone. On the stones I wasn’t able to get good contact with the first and last quarter of the blade. I could kind of get there with x-strokes but this was only compounding the existing issues and not fixing them. It also didn’t do much for the heel. I probably would have had better success with thinner stones. All of mine are 3” wide. She started life straight and now she is straight again. I think that’s how it was designed to be. I probably took 1mm of the centre of the blade to match the toe and heel. I think the razor is better for it.

sound good! are you able to do rolling x-strokes? i like to imagine a 35-40% lane of the 3"s that i am using when doing that stroke. it helps on occasion, but glad the razor is functioning better now and thats all that matters in the end.

 

[Tomo]

I did look into that. My limited understanding is that some razors are designed with a smile and to facilitate honing the spine is not flat to the stone. This allows you to rock the blade from side to side as you do a rolling x-stroke to pick up all of the edge. This razor has a flat spine and didn’t rock at all on the stone. Toe leading or heel leading made no difference either. I was just never able to get good contact with the stone. Works way better now but it was a ***** to hone. Very hard steel on these ones.

 

[Matt O]

The edge was just fantastic off of the yellow-orange JNAT with this Koraat 14 2.0. However, I have the second JNAT, and I just wanted to see if the blade prefers one edge over the other.

It isn’t a scientific process, but I will also be using the Ethos DBV2 again later today in order to compare.

Vr

Matt

 

[Tomo]

Gave the now straight faced MK31 a touch up on this beautiful new Thüringian Abziehstein. I could have honed for hours on this stone. It has a silkly smooth feel under the blade. The edge looks good. Tomorrow will tell.

 

[Matt O]

Gave the now straight faced MK31 a touch up on this beautiful new Thüringian Abziehstein. I could have honed for hours on this stone. It has a silkly smooth feel under the blade. The edge looks good. Tomorrow will tell.

View attachment 1181651

That’s a sweet stone! Please let us know how the edge worked out!

Vr

Matt

 

[Gamma]

8/8 Revisor full hollow, rehoned without tape now.

 

[Matt O]

 

[RumpleBearskin]

A little touch-up for the Joseph Smith today on the Les Latenuses. I started with a thin slurry on the yellow and diluted to running water. Then finished on the hybrid side again under clean water.

 

[alex1921]

Dorko on a suita and kamisori on 5k followed by kiita, DN and tomo.
These Kamis are so efficient. Dorko is going to a finisher, the edge has room to improve.

 

[Matt O]

So I was afforded a unique opportunity to purchase two modern Russian straight razors, and I am going to be putting them through their paces to see what’s what.

The first is a damascus razor made out of three different steels with approx 2600 layers.

I checked the bevel near the edge with a 30x loupe after each stone in the progression, and what I found surprised me. After I set the bevel on my Chosera 1k I checked, and did not see the typical scratch pattern. In fact there was barely any scratch pattern to note. I could only see a very very faint and consistent pattern...not a single rouge scratch, and nothing that approached anything that looked like deep. After the 4k it was even less, and after the 8k...nothing. It was pretty neat. Since this is my first damascus razor I had no clue what to expect.

The razor’s bevel near the edge appeared stunningly pristine under the 30x loupe, and the HHT was silent and effortless. In fact, as I was dropping the hair on the edge, one time it caught me by surprise!

At any rate, I guess tomorrow’s shave, and the next couple after that will tell the tale! So far so good!

Vr

Matt

 

[Yg420]

Touched up a Machida kamisori on a couple of nakayama kiitas, also hit a Tosuke kamisori with some fingerstones, and set the bevel on another Tosuke kamisori with a chosera 1k before I called it quits for the night

 

[global_dev]

Honed a gd66 on a jasper with coti slurry. So Smooth

 

[Loner16]

While I haven't yet ended my current affair with the synthetics, I did decide on a "one night stand," with a new, to me, coticule. It's a Barber sized, 2x4 inches, Old Rock I came upon a few months back. My success with coticule acquisitions this year has been a mixed bag, but this example seems very nice, although quite slow on plain water. An attractive little stone though..
I chose an old W.H. Morley 5/8, always a reliable razor, for the experiment..
It feels a bit like coming home, once again..