Honing 101

so surprisingly my dmt arrived today on a sunday! i am going to lap my nani 12k now.

can i hone my razor using strokes like stropping, ie, spine forward? i suspect i may have ruined the edge by improper stropping. will this method corrects it?

or do i just hone my razor with edge leading forward?

I always use edge forward on touch ups.
Which its what you are trying to do right?

I would recommend edge leading.

yes just for touch ups.

so no strokes on ninawa 12k with spine leading forward?

Nope just edge leading and was your razor taped last hone? If it was you need to tape it again

saj_j said:

so no strokes on ninawa 12k with spine leading forward?

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Nope

no it wasn't tape.

as i understand it, stropping pre/post shave maintains the razor's edge, but at some point, it dulls and needs honing. does that concept apply to touch ups on nani 12k?

This has been debated a bit. A few folks have argued that spine leading strokes (on abrasives) tend to do more damage to the edge than edge leading. I believe at least one of them backed up their stance with SEM images.

I use edge leading because it works better. Whether that is because it abrades faster, more regularly, or avoids some damage spine leading may do, I don't much care. It just works better in practice. And believe me I've tried both, extensively.

With use a razor can dull. There are microscopic flaws in an edge that can be revealed by things you wouldn't expect (See fuzzychops SEM of coti vs shapton, where the coti edge has a crumbling but intact area that fails completely after a handful of passes on the shapton), such as use or stropping. Metal fatigue sets in on the very edge due to the tiny teeny bits of displacement that occur there during use and stropping. And oxidation (even insignificant amounts) which builds up when the razor isn't used and is removed repeatedly by stropping gradually deforms the shape of the edge. At this point the nonabrasive (and thus not controllable) removal of metal by stropping can not repair the edge. You need to be able to remove metal in a controllable way, dependent on something outside the razor, you need abrasion. For most of us this is honing. "Touch up" honing is no different from "finishing" honing. They're just terms to identify WHY you're doing this honing. What the hone is actually doing is no different. It's removing surface material from the planes that form the bevel and area of spinewear which reveals planes deeper in the material of the razor (that's a 2d explanation, 3d is more complicated, but unnecessary for the concept of touch up honing).

saj_j said:

no it wasn't tape.

as i understand it, stropping pre/post shave maintains the razor's edge, but at some point, it dulls and needs honing. does that concept apply to touch ups on nani 12k?

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I'd say yes if I understand your question correctly. I try to keep it simple by using circles followed by x-strokes through out the progression, adjusting pressure and speed as I move up the grits. This includes touchups. No pressure and slower strokes.

Ok, I have a question; if you're sure you've maxed out the keenness of your JNAT/tomo combination, would it be a smart next step to try to get another tomo to see if it makes a difference, or should you look for another hone altogether?

I've bumped up the keenness just a tad by doing laps on lather only, but this leaves glycerine in the hone that needs to be lapped out. But hey, it was something to try.

What say the experts? New tomo? If so, where do you go to look for one? Thanks in advance.

Trying different Tomo Nagura may bring an improvement.
Or not. It depends, and you won't know for sure unless you try a few out.

KZero said:

Ok, I have a question; if you're sure you've maxed out the keenness of your JNAT/tomo combination, would it be a smart next step to try to get another tomo to see if it makes a difference, or should you look for another hone altogether?

I've bumped up the keenness just a tad by doing laps on lather only, but this leaves glycerine in the hone that needs to be lapped out. But hey, it was something to try.

What say the experts? New tomo? If so, where do you go to look for one? Thanks in advance.

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Do you have a Nagura set? What type of a Jnat do you have?

noahpictures said:

Do you have a Nagura set? What type of a Jnat do you have?

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The stone is an Okudo Gousa Kamisori Toishi.
Current setup is a 1k Chosera for bevel setting, and the Okudo with tomo for finishing, which it does surprisingly well. I have no nagura, but I have made several attempts to do mid-level refinement with a progression of mid-level lapping film before finishing on tomo slurry, but whether I do anything between or not, it finishes out to the same level of keenness.

For clarification: My edges are very smooth and forgiving, and if all I ever needed to do was shave with and across the grain of my beard, I'd never look any further. Where the blade's edge really shows what it's made of is when it's time to go against the grain, and doing so on the corners of my mouth is pretty much the acid test of any edge.

With any luck, I sometimes get an edge that will shave this area with very little pulling, little enough that the skin there doesn't get irritated and doing south-to-north passes on my mustache area takes only a moderate effort. (To save myself and others extra typing, I'll condense the previous sentence down to "HHT3.")

The best edges I have shaved with have been the ones from Doc's JNATs and Scott's Thuringian.
These edges do as stated before, shave the entirety of my face, including against the grain, with no pulling and very little effort. As long as I mind the pressure there is normally no irritation, and no burn from the aftershave. (To save myself and others extra typing, I'll condense the previous two sentences down to "HHT4-5.")

I'm also a firm believer that "the bevel is the edge," and I've fallen short on getting them set in the past, enough so that I know better now than to get ahead of myself. Bevel set testing is done with a variation on Doc's tomato test, using white seedless grapes (I don't eat raw tomatoes.) Hanging hair testing is done with hair that is all from a single pony tail.

The stone, dry and with slurry:

My guess would be you need a finer, harder stone as a finisher. An Ozuku Asagi is a great bargain in my opinion for under $100.

HonerSimpson said:

A razor is basically as sharp as it will get at around the 8k level.
The step beyond 8k is to add keenness by refining the very edge.
Smoothness requires a balance of sharp and keen.

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Sharp and keen mean exactly the same thing...are we just inventing definitions now?

gumbo said:

Sharp and keen mean exactly the same thing...are we just inventing definitions now?

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You can use whatever definitions suit you, mine make an important distinction between the two terms.

Sharpness, as defined by the width of the steel at some distance from the edge, is determined by the bevel angle, once the (triangular) bevel is "set" somewhere around a 4k grit stone. IOW "sharpness comes from the bevel setting step"

Keenness, as defined by the width of the edge, or the radius or curvature of the edge, is determined by the finishing step. Increased keenness requires convexity of the edge and therefore reduced sharpness. With the exception of (the trivial case) of a simply going to higher grits and creating a weak triangular shaped edge, which will fail during the shave and produce "harshness." IOW "keenness comes from the finishing stage.

By these definitions, commercial DE and AC blades are keen but not so sharp. Increasing keenness at the expense of sharpness occurs with use of micro- or secondary bevels or pasted edges.

In practical terms, the larger the angle (less sharp) the more the whisker must deform/distort to allow the blade to pass through.
In simple terms, Keenness determines the ability of the edge to "catch" the whisker, Sharpness, determines the force to cut.

I am tracking with what you are describing, but I don't think keen and sharp are differentiated enough for use in this manner. It also leaves a big gap for those that use no secondary bevel. A good argument could be made that all of us that use a hanging strop create at least a tiny amount of convexity to our edge, but what about the paddle strop guys.

keen

1 [keen] Show IPAadjective, keen·er, keen·est.1.finely sharpened, as an edge; so shaped as to cut or pierce substances readily: a keen razor.

Full Definition of SHARP

1
: adapted to cutting or piercing: as
a : having a thin keen edge or fine point

I think Gumbo is right. Sharp = Keen

Keen and sharp are similar enough to be used interchangeably and each word can be a synonym of the other.

Though the English definitions of sharp and keen may make them synonyms, it is quite common in technical fields to narrowly define a term to precisely convey an idea. As has been pointed out, this can cause confusion if the reader is not familiar with the technical definition but that doesn't mean it's wrong or not useful.

You guys get all bent out of shape on what word a guy uses and spend 5x more effort arguing that than trying to help him. He gave what he meant in the context of his question well enough for me to understand it, so I know you guys who are more accomplished should be able to figure it out. It's amusing to me but if I was trying to get an answer instead of a grammar lesson I might be frustrated.