Barbers Hones Reviews and comparisons.

SliceOfLife said:

To go from one extreme to the other. The best one I've encountered so far with my testing (about half way through);
The Carborundum Co. Aloxite.

Shave ease: 7/10
After-shave feel: 8/10
Hours of shave: 18
Though at a glance, I'd take it for a Swaty copy, I'd assume by the name it's alox based, rather than a mix (which Swaty's are). What impressed me was the feel in the shave, didn't feel like a barbers touch up hone edge. It felt like an edge off a modern synthetic. Very even and consistent edge. The razor didn't feel like it had the flaws barbers hones usually leave razors feeling of. Unusually good for a barber synth. And the feedback was right up there with some of the best barber's synth's I've used. You can almost visualize the edge under abrasion from the feel, which is a nice part of these extremely aggressive hones. Of course the shave duration exposes that the grit still isn't quite up to par with what is available today... for its day and for its speed it has really impressed me. Thus far, I'd consider this the "coticule" of barbers synthetics. The dark spots on the scope image are oil residue from the strop.

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I have one of those somewhere...

I really like the idea of a barbers hone. A simple and quick refresh of the edge. They seemed to work fine for many many years. But also understand that like anything there are good and bad.
I have a Pike, a 3line Swaty and a Craftsman. Really looking forward to your reviews.

Doc226 said:

Very cool idea, I would say you are taking one for the team.

How are you "sterilizing" the edge after each barber's hone?

At one point I was testing a bunch of JNATs and used film to wipe out the previous stone's finish.

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By sterilizing you mean resetting? I take off the former edge with a 6k JIS. In the case of two sided stones, I use both sides of the stone.

As for taking one for the team, there have definitely been cases I'd agree with you on that point; but I've been surprised that there are some pretty reasonable stones so far. It's quite remarkable just how widely these things varied. Some are just useless, while others are quite functional. It makes me even more cynical about the old recommendation people would give to buy a swaty or this or that hone. I'm theorizing that even within the models, even disregarding breakdown, there is a LOT of variance at play here. It wouldn't surprise me if the reason some of the guides we've seen focused on advising barbers to check hones grit with their tongue before buying, rather than recommending specific stones (except of course ones advertising in these pamphlets which were always for some reason recommended)... my guess is that one batch of Pike swaty's could vary by several microns on max particle size from the next or previous batches. The same goes for every one of these stones. The consistency of modern synthetics certainly doesn't seem to be there.

Moving on:

Not as many guesses as I was expecting. It's actually the left. The right is the coarse side and the left the fine side of a two sided barbers hone. People should have trusted their judgements regarding the edge, and it made perfectly the point I was trying to demonstrate.

I can barely reliably judge grits by scratch pattern at 400x past 3-6micron. It just does not work. Around that point, the actual size of a scratch pattern doesn't significantly reflect changes in grit, you'd do better looking at the way light reflects without magnification. There's a brief point of usefulness when the scratch patterns start to disappear, but that's well into the sub-micron particle sizes, and relies on both a very tightly graded abrasive, more work done on that abrasive than most would bother with, and immaculate honing leading up to that abrasive.

Anyway, the next set of results will be up in a few hours.

A dry hone this time around. The Hibbard.

Shave ease: 6/10
After-shave feel: 8/10
Hours of shave: 19

Another surprisingly decent edge.

For people who use barber's hones, they're surely aware of the warnings and threats of wire edges. In my experimenting across these stones (including doing several hundred laps on a swaty); the problem of edge damage (which people seem to attribute (probably correctly) to wire edges ripping away arises out of clogged surfaces on the hones. Rub the surface of your barbers hone clean on a regular basis (every couple dozen laps for most of these stones seems ideal), and the problem vanishes. Oilstones, softer whetstones, and the carborundum looking carborundum co's (the grey ones that look like pocket knife stones) seem free of these problems when used correctly. Swaty stones and copy's seem the most prone to them, though likely other hard stones such as frictionites would behave similarly.

Every stone I've tested can function exactly as if it were a benchstone of the same grit with the exception that it necessitates regular cleaning. This manifests problems for stones that rely on the clogging to achieve a shallow cut, where the directions to clog the stone, do only a few passes and only clean the stone when it ceases to cut entirely leave you with what is in my opinion, a pretty useless stone that might work, by absolute chance, here or there; but should never have been marketed. Several of the coarser "fake" swaty's "The Three Line Hone" seem to fall into this camp. Finer stones that proffer the same directions, however can be useful, as even clean they cut finely enough to be of use.

Mmmm... - I can assure you that I've experienced several not-clogged b-hones that will cause a wire or fin quickly. Other factors weigh in, clogging might do it also, but I won't agree that clogging is the sole cause. I distinctly remember lapped and surfaced Champion and Boss hones (little black shorty version) turning edges into useless fins quite quickly.

Were they all like that? Dunno. Were they all like that when new? No way to tell.
My Swaty seems to not do this though, while other similar 'looking' variations on that theme did horrible things to the edge.
I haven't tested all of my Swatys though, and even without testing to 'proof stage' here - my Frictionite definitely seems prone to this.

While it's possible to do so, personally - I'd pass on using any of these slabs of joy as regular finishers. Many seem to have such a wide span of particle sizes and/or dead spots for me to view using one as a traditional finisher makes sense. Most of the 'fine' sides won't do much for an edge gone down to where I'd consider starting with a 3-5k stone, and the coarse sides of a lot of these hones can leave bevels that look like a war zone that the fine side will not save. Sure - the edge will probably shave, but over time this isn't how I want to treat the edge.

Well, just trying to think through the likely history of widespread marketing of barber's hones, I suspect they became most popular after barbers mainly used the razor to trim.

I suspect that by 1920 or so most of the shaving population was using a safety razor at home. Certainly not everyone, but probably 80% of the country's shaving was done at home. (Outside the US I'm pretty certain this reasoning breaks down.)

In addition by then many urban and semi-urban areas had electricity, and I suspect barbers were moving to electric clippers to increase throughput - and thereby revenue.

So I'm guessing that by the time companies making barbers hones to market nationwide got popular the primary use of the razor in a barbers life was the sidewall cleanup we all remember.

So a smooth shave wasn't as critical, but convenient touchup was critical. So the barbers hone was the tool that kept an edge "good enough" from day to day.

Most likely the older barbers of the day looked at them askance as an abomination degrading the trade.

So, how's that for completely confabulating a history?

I'd agree that most seem to have problems that would preclude their use as a sharpening hone. Irregular particle size being foremost. But that falls in with the variance. The Swaty I'm testing right now, when kept clean, leaves an edge almost indistinguishable from what a modern synthetic will leave. And I'm unsure how to expect a hone to simultaneously be fast and incapable of progressing an edge at a lower grit. I mean, clogging would explain that, but otherwise, a fast stone that can't benefit from being fast would be an anomaly.

Mrb7, I doubt that's the case. Several hones boxes, advertisements and directions brag about how this stone leaves an edge that will not "smart" or a half dozen similar claims that wouldn't seem to have much meaning in the case where the razor were only used for trimming of sideburns.

SliceOfLife said:

I'd agree that most seem to have problems that would preclude their use as a sharpening hone. Irregular particle size being foremost. But that falls in with the variance. The Swaty I'm testing right now, when kept clean, leaves an edge almost indistinguishable from what a modern synthetic will leave. And I'm unsure how to expect a hone to simultaneously be fast and incapable of progressing an edge at a lower grit. I mean, clogging would explain that, but otherwise, a fast stone that can't benefit from being fast would be an anomaly.

Mrb7, I doubt that's the case. Several hones boxes, advertisements and directions brag about how this stone leaves an edge that will not "smart" or a half dozen similar claims that wouldn't seem to have much meaning in the case where the razor were only used for trimming of sideburns.

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Maybe so. I can't say.

Or maybe they confabulated their claims the same way I confabulated mine. I just sat here and made it all up.

I'm a bit surprised that you're having trouble with a wire edge on a Champion or Boss. Both are rather soft and coarse for Swaty-types. In fact I've got a Champion here. Three pics are finished edge (forget finish, coti maybe), then 6 laps on champ, then well over 50 laps on champ. There's no way I would ever wire an edge on this. Way too fast, soft, and resistant to clogging. The surface just erodes too fast. Now you could EASILY burr an edge on this if you honed with that intent.

Now it's not a very good hone... that could possibly give you results similar to a broken wire... or maybe yours was just different to mine. I've got another one here exactly the same, and the Boss was virtually identical too (sold it last week), so I'd suspect your stones were the odd ones out. I kind of suspect you might be giving these stones too much credit and ascribing their performance to wires that have broken. Have you ever been able to actually pull away a wire from a razor honed on a clean barber hone?

And here's that razor cleaned on 8k, then brought to a subtle wire on the 8k

Cleaned the wire off and honed on swaty.

Clogged the Swaty and started to raise a wire. This actually took way, way longer than I was expecting. We're in the neighborhood of 300+ strokes in the third image... that's just how much swarf I had to transfer. I could do the same thing by doing 290 strokes on another razor and then raising a wire on this one in ten. The problem was I had just cleaned the Swaty after my last honing.

If I clog the stone enough, it will tear the edge up significantly enough it looks like the images coming off the Champion in the post above, or worse (when a large wire on a razor fails, the edge takes up gouges that can be in the 60-220grit range), smaller wires, like the one I raised on the 8k here can be removed without leaving any gouges at all (visible at 400x).

Really excited for tomorrows shave. This Swaty is looking freakishly good. I've probably owned two dozen (If not more) in the past, none like this. It looks similar to my 13k Sigma power under the scope, if the shave is even close to how it's looking, it's gonna be good. Played around with a few more stones, nothing special there. There's eight more in line to try (and several more than that to post). Of the 8 left, three are double sideds I'm pretty curious about, and four are what I thought from inspection would be the four nicest single sided stones. Then there's another double sided that strikes me as not likely to impress, but it's a bit of a rare example, so I had to try it out of curiousity.

Both the Boss and the Champion I had were hard, very hard, almost stone-like - if that makes sense. More of a masonry kinda feel/composition. Where the Swatys seem to be more plasticy and less granular. Think Asphalt vs hard playdough.

I'd definitely agree on the swaty description. It's starting to sound like the "less popular" or rarer (or cheaper made perhaps) stones are very inconsistent in their composition. By soft, I don't mean soft like the #79 or the honeyourown* or victory hone, but soft for a swaty-lookalike. Masonry feel is an absolutely perfect description. They feel somewhere between brick and concrete, but finer... but for me brick and concrete is pretty friable compared to some very hard synthetics, which is why I can't clog these. They cut pretty fast, but even though they don't slurry or anything like that, they don't clog up in the way hard stones like frictionites, swaty's, and my first Apache hone did. Their cutting seems very consistent, which with my honing technique makes creating a foil edge all but impossible. I suppose I could try greatly decreasing or increasing the pressure I apply, but it'd be to such an extent, I really doubt that would be the difference between our results. I'm thinking that it's very likely just that the hones are so inconsistent in particle size, and cutting action, that they leave an edge that is a very convincing facsimile for a broken off wire.

I'll try and get a wire edge on one of the harder stones and break it off later in this test to put beside those Champion edges I imaged, to demonstrate, but really they look very, very similar. The difference is that the Champion never achieves the wire stage, it just cuts so poorly, that the edge it cuts looks almost like a wire was ripped away. Most of the "cheap"-feeling swaty copies I've worked with behave the same way. But it's the "good" swaty's (and other, similarly hard, fine, and consistent B-hones) that I can actually raise wires on if I try (or in this case by accident when I used the stone without having cleaned it first).

*With regard to the honeyourown, it slurries when lapping just like the #79, and I suspect is similar composition, though it's much coarser.

Shave ease: 5/10
After-shave feel: 6/10
Hours of shave: 17

I had to test this stone because it had no identifying markings. It's beveled at the ends, so I suspect a strop was clipped around it at one point. I'd define the performance as "respectable". Definitely in the upper 50% of barber hones I've used. Behaved well, was easy to use. A pretty straightforward hone that didn't strike me as gimmicky or demanding of particular techniques the way stones like the Victory and Aloxite #79 were. It's still a barbers hone, and not something I'd shave off daily. (So far none of these are). Same story with the dark patches, in scope pic; residue from strop.

The swaty shave was interesting. It's the best swaty I've had, but wasn't as great a shave as I had hoped. I'll go into more details when I post its results.

I'd be curious to see if smearing Vaseline on these hones prior to use alters their performance. I've seen it mentioned in other posts elsewhere.

May be for another thread but food for thought.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the Barber hones and feel that the time since their manufacture may have altered their properties but can't be sure. All my experimenting with them over the last decade or so has always given me disappointing results in the end. YMMV.

Good luck, I'm following with interest.

Chris

Yeah, I'm going to talk a bit about the elements of breakdown and consistency once I wrap up the reviews. As for the treatments with Vaseline, Gamma has done some experimentation with that and could probably write a thread about how much impact he's found that has with certain stones, which hopefully he will some day (or he could point us to it on his site if he's got that data there). I did some very limited testing with the 118s and found it didn't accomplish much. Beyond that, I've tried to see if it can undo the damage of breakdown (doesn't seem to), but I've not done much more testing, as the majority of barber hones directions advise against that... tending to suggest either scrubbing with a finger, a cloth, emery, or at most the addition of lather as the only maintenance they advise. Certain Carborundum Co. stones are the exception; due to many of their products being oil-stones, and as such, often being intended to be filled (or being filled). I believe Keith has said that he suspects (or possibly knows) that the distinction between some of Carborundum Co's razor hones model #'s was the substance the hones were filled with.

Keith's resurfacing and breaking in practices intrigue me, but they're not something I've done much experimentation or had any success with. Overwhelmingly my attempts to change the character of barber hones has accomplished nothing, or degraded the stones performance. The exception being simple, non-abrasive cleaning, which universally seems to improve the performance of these stones... and which contributes to my dislike of stones that seem to rely on clogging to achieve suitable fineness for their purpose. This is related to why the #69 and Victory both intrigued me so much (they are among a handful of barber stones that advise cleaning the surface of the stone with some regularity).

I don't think b-hones that have undergone 'breakdown' can be salvaged, at least not with any consistency.
What I do see is that treating them with some kind of lubricant eliminates what appears to be a complication due to dryness, or perhaps it's just replacing something that was orginally offering cushion, glide, etc.
Hard to say.
The American Hone Co. recipies are pretty straight forward but the binder composition isn't specified. I suspect that there's some sort of polymer in them that, at least, offers some 'smooth' that helps keep the harsh semi-inconsistent abrasive from wreaking too much havoc.

Personally - I think a good number, perhaps the lion's share, of these little surfboards were sold to common Joes in hardware stores and pharmacies. Barbers, I don't think, would be as swayed by hype as they would be by word of mouth from their peers. My guess is they bought from suppliers who, primarily, stocked the 'hot ticket' hones of the day. The rest of the 'wannabe' hones would be, my guess, seen on shelves in the local shops where merchants could 'sell' whatever to whoever.

Yes, I suspect it was a rare synth hone that appealed to a barber enough to invest in. I've bought a few barbers bags (with razors, dues books, clippers, hones, etc, etc) on eBay over the years, and I believe every single one had at least one coticule in it. The synthetics I found were mostly sample-sizes (one I've kept is a swaty-type that is about 20x15mm and was shipped in a tiny box with a 1cent stamp on it). Of the full sizes I've found, Swaty's are by far the most common, and I'd say I find five or more coti's for every swaty. These sellers WANTED to be able to say Barbers approved of and used their hones, but for the most part, it seems coticules were the go to (in this country anyway, I'd guess Thuri's were better represented in Germany, as they seem to be in the UK).

That's not to say Barbers didn't use these, but there seems definitely a preference to go to a coticule where possible. Popular stones today, like the Norton and Frictionite, I've never seen or heard of coming out of a barber bag. Swaty seems the standard. Also, reading some texts, and based on strops and crayons pulled from barber bags; the use of pastes by barbers seems pretty widely spread. Not always commercial pastes (one book was posted recently suggesting to charge a linen strop with rust), but there was definitely some usage. So, I'd agree that expecting these things to impress is a bit naive; but for all the promises the boxes and advertisements make, you can always hope there was one maker out there with a fantastic product trying desperately to make people understand that their promises were not empty. And that's part of why I'm doing this. I want to find a barber hone that provides the thrills some people have gotten from Frictionites, Nortons, and even swaty's for me. But I've used modern synths and top quality naturals extensively. I'm a hard honer to impress. I'm not holding my breath, just hoping.

I strongly doubt any of these are acting exactly as they did when they were shiny and new

SliceOfLife said:

That's not to say Barbers didn't use these, but there seems definitely a preference to go to a coticule where possible. Popular stones today, like the Norton and Frictionite, I've never seen or heard of coming out of a barber bag.

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Ian I personally dont think so, all the big ones to name them here: "Raven, Frictionite, Swaty, Nox All, etc..." Have been sold in the big sales Catalogues of Sears Roebruck and other ones (actually i do not have my researches here with me) and shurely these have been sold in masses. Because they never skipped them or kicked them out from their Catalogue, in my thinking this is an Indicator that they sold a lot of these...

As you mentioned the Coticules, shurely it was a question either to buy a Coti or probably a Barber Hone...talking about the price, there was no too big difference, the Coti cost around 1,50-2,70usd, the Barber Hones started with 0,75cents up to 1,50usd...

But thinking about the usage also in the past there might have been people not coming around that easy with a Coti...as it is today. We all know that getting good results with a coti takes a certain time in learning and having time to learn how to come around with a Coti...

So yeah it might be that there was a certain time frame where Cotis might have been preferred to Barber Hones or Thuris, but i know and wrote with Barbers and with Guys beeing a Barbers Son and from two i know that the Frictionite was one of their favorites...