Barber Hone Tips?

[FootAJ]

After talking to my barber about shaving with a straight, he pulled me aside and gave me his barber hone and a straight razor from his collection. I plan on restoring a razor and giving it to him as a 'Thank You'.

He showed me from his Standardized Textbook of Barbering how to use it, but I was wondering how you guys use it? I've read up on using hones and have the basic idea, but it seems like barber hones are somewhat different. So, what are your routines? How many laps? Wet? Dry? Lather?

Any tips and suggestions are appreciated!

[gglockner]

Would almost have to write you a book to answer your questions. I would also need to ask you a bunch of questions first, but maybe I can sum it up.

You have one hone? Is it a finishing hone or medium grit?

If your razor has a good bevel or edge and you have a finishing hone, you can get good results. Does it feel like it is cutting into your wet thumb nail when dragging the edge acrossed it? Start dry then wet then finish using lather. Piece of cake?

If your razor needs edge work you can accomplish this with the medium grit hone, but will not be able to get the razor keen enough to shave with.

Send us a picture of the razor will help us around here to.

Glen

[FootAJ]

Glen,

It feels very smooth, if that helps. Nowhere on it does it say what grit it is. It actually has no writing whatsoever. There's no specific razor I'm honing, but in general all of my straights have some sort of edge already.

What I've been doing it 50 dry, 50 wet, and then 50 lather. I then did ~50 on my linen strop. This gave the razor I have been restoring SOMEWHAT of an edge, but certainly not very sharp. Just more of what there was before.

I'm wondering specifically around how many trips I need to make on the hone. I hear it's possible to overhone, so I want to try and avoid that.

As for your questions. I only have one hone, and as I mentioned earlier in this post, it's very very smooth. I do the thumbnail test and it cuts into it (all of my razors do) but the one I've been practicing honing is certainly not shave-ready sharp.

Here's a picture of the one I've been working on. I know it's a bit large and lighing sucks, but hopefully you can see the edge I'm talking about. Hopefully this is what you mean? I'm very new to honing, and although I've read a lot about it on the boards, there is still so much more I need to learn! :)

[mparker762]

For the most part I find that the barber hones don't really produce a great shaving edge right off the hone - they'll get you fairly sharp, but not particularly smooth. But you can supply the last bit of sharpness and smoothness pretty quickly with the linen side of your strop. Most of my barber hone directions say to use only 3-5 laps, then strop and test before further honing. I'll usually do about 50 laps on the linen and another 20 or so on the leather before testing.

[gglockner]

If the razor is really dragging or digging into your thumb nail after all that, I am thinking you may have a medium grit hone. A finish hone smoothes out the edge so the thumb nail test is no longer valid at this point. That and you do not want to do the thumb nail test after using the finishing hone. I use the HHT to check my progress out if in doubt. It is hard to explain the difference when you only have the one hone. A finish hone feels like it is doing nothing, where you can feel the razor on the medium grit hone. Over honing isn't really that big of a deal, just a few passes in the opposite direction then start again.

Glen

[gglockner]

For the most part I find that the barber hones don't really produce a great shaving edge right off the hone - they'll get you fairly sharp, but not particularly smooth. But you can supply the last bit of sharpness and smoothness pretty quickly with the linen side of your strop.

I would think this to be true with any hone you use. One does not shave without some sort of stropping be it linen, leather or both. Since linen and leather do not remove steel you are only polishing or re-aligning the edge.

Glen

[mparker762]

I would think this to be true with any hone you use. One does not shave without some sort of stropping be it linen, leather or both. Since linen and leather do not remove steel you are only polishing or re-aligning the edge.

No, I've got some hones - including some barber hones - that shave great right off the hone without going to linen, just strop on leather and shave. But the really common medium grit ones like the swaty or dubl duck definitely need linen.