Honing experiments

For those who have been honing for a while, how you ever tried to see what the least honing was to get a decent shave?

What about setting a bevel on a 1k, hitting a pasted strop and then clean leather?

Or going from 1k to 12k?

Well I have used Alex G's Ax method and it works well, I personally like to have a little more "Honing Zen" so I choose to run my current sessions longer, for example I did a full progression today ( 1K Chosera, 4/8K Shapton Glass and finished on a Narutaki Asagi and the HHT is the same as using a 4K and finisher...

So to answer your question I have gone from 1K to finisher then leather and the shave was pretty good.

What is the ax method?

seattleshaver said:

What is the ax method?

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You can search YouTube for the ax method. Lots of videos there. But for a streamlined honing approach i just set a 1.5k bevel and went straight to a La Grise coticule with an oil/mineral spirits mix and man its mowing through arm hair at the half way point. I was never able to get that w/ water and dulicot though.

lightfoot said:

You can search YouTube for the ax method. Lots of videos there. But for a streamlined honing approach i just set a 1.5k bevel and went straight to a La Grise coticule with an oil/mineral spirits mix and man its mowing through arm hair at the half way point. I was never able to get that w/ water and dulicot though.

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Can't you get that just with the 1k?

I find this to be, in general, an interesting subject and that is how little honing is really required. I don't find there to be enough "enjoyment" in using film so I don't do that. I'm "wet shaving" for there to be some higher level of enjoyment when engaged in shaving activities.

Yet, I don't need as much from shaving as many in that I'm not that into multiple brushes and soaps/creams. I do seem to buy a lot of vintage straights and most of that is so that I have something new to hone and fix up in general.

I understand the zen like pleasure of using all of the various natural stones (although I don't have them for the most part) and my honing process is using a cobbled together assortment of inexpensive waterstones (and a few coarser oil stones). Just in my more limited experience with honing it seems that once the bevel is set everything else works out regardless of what you do. Especially if you include a few laps on chromium oxide somewhere along the way.

Sometimes those new to straight shaving are concerned about the hassle and cost of honing. People either bring up film (as being inexpensive) or talk about how you can get a good progression of stones for only $250 without realizing that someone who isn't sure that they will even like straight razors and who may be looking at buying an Ebay razor for $20 doesn't see the logic in spending $250 to sharpen a $20 razor.

The other irony is that even when you have a lot of razors and a lot of hones...eventually you get to use them very little unless you keep buying more razors. It takes very little to maintain an edge so you don't get to use your hones.

I guess this is when you get to the point of deciding to shave with a coticule edge today and a jnat edge tomorrow when all you really want to do is to get more honing time.

seattleshaver said:

Can't you get that just with the 1k?

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I think you're talking about being able to shave arm hair at skin level after a bevel set. You can not cut arm hair at the mid length (Blade floating about an eighth inch above the skin) off a 1k.

seattleshaver said:

What is the ax method?

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http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/478525-Alex-G-s-quot-Ax-Method-quot?highlight=

I once honed a razor using an edge trailing stroke, from bevel set to finisher. It worked, but was very awkward to hone. I am way more used to edge leading.

I'm into minimalism in honing. I've had decent shaves off a 1.2k/8k King combo. Also a 1k/6k Suehiro combo followed by the Thiers-Issard crayon on suede. Fine India oil-stone followed by translucent Ark will also do the trick, followed by a red ferox-pasted strop.

I recall that Gamma posted a video where he did a pasted sequence after a bevel-setting stone, or something like that. You might check that out, it was most impressive.

I'm beginning to think anything followed by green paste works.

I am thinking I need to try the 1K, 8K then pasted linen just out of curiosity.

There's also an issue of what level of refinement each individual is seeking. You could shave off a 1k to pasted strops perhaps. I just don't know how much finess it would have during the shave. I'm not suggesting that you need a lot of hones but I would let your honing goals be guided by the kind of shaving edge your face NEEDS to avoid irritation and cuts. I try to aim for a good cutting low liability edge that doesn't lead to redness and such.

It doesn't get much simpler than a jnat and a tomo nagura. It's all you need after a bevel setter. Several options below $100 exist, Alex's gray tomaes, the shobudani 100, or a Nakayama koppa from the knife maker Takeda-San. You can use diamond plate slurry as a midgrit, then a tomo nagura or just thin diamond plate slurry. If you use synthetics, film or stones, you'll likely need a progression or a lot of patience.

You can also do the same thing with a coticule but the success rate seems a little variable.

Cheers, Steve

Steve56 said:

It doesn't get much simpler than a jnat and a tomo nagura. It's all you need after a bevel setter. Several options below $100 exist, Alex's gray tomaes, the shobudani 100, or a Nakayama koppa from the knife maker Takeda-San. You can use diamond plate slurry as a midgrit, then a tomo nagura or just thin diamond plate slurry. If you use synthetics, film or stones, you'll likely need a progression or a lot of patience.

You can also do the same thing with a coticule but the success rate seems a little variable.

Cheers, Steve

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Steve, you can't go wrong with jnats. And as far as shaving comfort goes the jnat edges I've been able to drum up so far have been easy on the face and not hyper sharp or harsh at all.

I've been wanting to start a thread like this too.

Minimum synth refinement to shave? 8k JIS barely acceptable. 6k/4k JIS/8k Mesh/8k Norton. Not acceptable, but better than nothing if you absolutely MUST shave. 4k Norton/3K JIS, might as well not bother. But actually CAPABLE of the act? You can go way down... way WAY down. If it cuts arm hair, it technically CAN shave.


Other questions I'd like to test/see. Is a secondary strop component necessary off the hones, only between shaves, or never? Can X number of passes on linen/canvas/etc be substituted for by Y number of passes on leather... in other words, will 40 or 60 or 100 passes on leather produce the same edge as 20/20? What's the minimal size microchip that can cause irritation/bleeding? Performance of synthetic edges vs natural compared using scything motions vs pushing motions. There are others that occur to me regularly, but I don't write them down, so I can't recall them offhand.

This idea for this thread occurred to me while honing. I have a group of razors that I've honed that are very sharp and shave well. I have a smaller group of newer (to me) razors that I had to do some restoration on before honing that are not there yet.

I can feel the edge and it doesn't feel like I'm used to them feeling. I shaved with them and it wasn't comfortable or sharp enough. So, instead of continuing to try to figure out (learn) what was wrong I just used my pasted paddle strops and it improved them greatly. They were still not on par with my regular razors but the shaves were much better.

I still have them set aside of course so that I can figure out what I still need to do but it got me to thinking about how little "had" to be done between bevel setting and a pasted strop. A pasted strop seems to correct a lot.

I also found that over honing with a pasted strop wasn't as big of an issue as I had read about. I usually stick with about 5-7 laps on the pasted strop but in this case I used 3 pasted strops and did 20 or so laps on each one. I checked them with a microscope and a loupe and there was no burr or wire edge and all was fine.

Steve56 said:

It doesn't get much simpler than a jnat and a tomo nagura. It's all you need after a bevel setter. Several options below $100 exist, Alex's gray tomaes, the shobudani 100, or a Nakayama koppa from the knife maker Takeda-San. You can use diamond plate slurry as a midgrit, then a tomo nagura or just thin diamond plate slurry. If you use synthetics, film or stones, you'll likely need a progression or a lot of patience.

You can also do the same thing with a coticule but the success rate seems a little variable.

Cheers, Steve

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Steve,

I have bread knifed an edge and used only JNAT to reset the bevel and finished on, it took several refreshes and some heavy pressure and circles at first but the shave was very good, took about 30 mins to hone so i know it works.

SliceOfLife said:

I've been wanting to start a thread like this too.

Minimum synth refinement to shave? 8k JIS barely acceptable. 6k/4k JIS/8k Mesh/8k Norton. Not acceptable, but better than nothing if you absolutely MUST shave. 4k Norton/3K JIS, might as well not bother. But actually CAPABLE of the act? You can go way down... way WAY down. If it cuts arm hair, it technically CAN shave.


Other questions I'd like to test/see. Is a secondary strop component necessary off the hones, only between shaves, or never? Can X number of passes on linen/canvas/etc be substituted for by Y number of passes on leather... in other words, will 40 or 60 or 100 passes on leather produce the same edge as 20/20? What's the minimal size microchip that can cause irritation/bleeding? Performance of synthetic edges vs natural compared using scything motions vs pushing motions. There are others that occur to me regularly, but I don't write them down, so I can't recall them offhand.

Click to expand...

I have tried 25/75 on linen/leather and 15/25 with the same and recently 25 pre shave on leather and 15/25 post linen/leather and honestly my face can't tell the difference, I'm not sure how long the edge will hold up though.

I've had plenty of shaves without the linen. I usually do 10 linen and 30 leather but I think the linen is just to clean off the blade before it goes on the leather.