Question on width of hones

[Onimaho]

To start I'd like to preface the question by saying I'm completely new to honing. No experience at all. I do like doing my research before doing any purchases and have a question on the width of hones. I

So to start off I see that currently wide hones which allow for honing the full razor is the norm. I however noticed that older pictures and stones are long and narrow. This requires x strokes but other than that I don't really see a disadvantage. The advantage here seems that it would be more flexible towards geometry such as smiling razors or warped razors. (Please correct me if I made a wrong estimation here)

Now my question is there a downside to narrow hones that I'm plainly not aware of. As a complete novice with only the Internet and no mentor, I completely lack any kind of common sense on this topic.

 

[Legion]

No. In fact a narrower hone (and an X stroke) is preferable when honing razors.

Very narrow hones (~1") can be a little trickier to use when you are new, but with good technique and practice, they will hone just as well, and depending on the razor maybe better, than a wider hone.

 

[Saloogie]

There's nothing wrong using bigger stones when starting out.

I started out on wider and longer stones because it was just easier. But as I got more into this and I got more comfortable with honing, I started buying smaller stones. It's a bit of an adjustment, but I got used to it soon enough and now I'm pretty comfortable with the smaller stones. And you'll save quite a bit of money buying smaller stones to.

In any case, just be patient. Honing is a skill that takes time to master. I'm still at work in progress myself!

 

[lightfoot]

Narrow hones are easier to have unexpected mishaps on in some cases. The edges definitely need to be “rounded over”, or some other similar treatment because a right-angled stone edge will do some damage to the razor’s edge if someone accidentally “digs into” the edge of the stone.

Once the edges of a narrow stone have been smoothed out then one doesn’t have to be quite as guarded.

 

[Onimaho]

Seems like there are a lot of fans for narrow stones. Does anyone know why the wider stones are more readily available? Especially synthetic stones such as Naniwa, Shapton, etc seem to only sell wide stones?

 

[helicopter]

An 8x3x1 hone is the standard Japanese bench size. I find them incredibly well suited to freehand sharpening of kitchen and pocket knives. They are also nice for perfectly ground laser straight razors, which you don't normally find.

An old fashioned razor hone, say 1.25x6, is much easier to reach a bevel with for the wonky forged and hand ground edge of fairly typical razors. However, a narrow hone and poor technique can put a frown on the edge, which hurts shaving performance performance. Coarse narrow hones and rudimentary technique explain all of the old junkers with frowns that you see.

The smaller hones are also cheaper, and still get the job done. A shift from practicality to hobbyists has also pushed stones bigger. Giant bricks of natural stone can be a status symbol. And a rolling stroke can usually hit a wonky edge alright with a full sized stone.

 

[captaincaed]

Does anyone know why the wider stones are more readily available?

From a production standpoint, these stones need to serve multiple purposes, such as knives and tools like plane irons. Sharpening a plane iron on a 1 inch wide hone would be a nightmare.

If your razor is not warped, the wide hone is quite nice. I would argue it’s worth finding razors without grind problems especially to start. It's easier to get even contact and pressure from stem to stern, and it’s easier to apply subtle torque that helps you effectively sharpen the Apex of the razor.

When you’re finally down the rabbit hole deep enough, I think the narrow hones makes some sense in the situations like those mentioned above.

I'm personally not a fan of narrow hones. I'll take a 6x2 or 8x3 any day.

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

You have to remember that the Razor Honing crowd is a very small part of the hone buying public. As said most stones do multiple duty and are purchased for knife and tool honing, and for those purposes a 3” stone works very well.

You will find that the X stoke will keep a razor honed well and doing a straight stroke only, will produce a frown.

Also you can easily hone a razor with a warp, (most razors) with a 3-inch stone by just using 1” of one edge, it just takes a bit of practice and paying attention and honing each side of the razor with a different technique.

For finishing you will not be doing as many laps and removing much steel so a smaller, narrower stone can easily finish a razor.

 

[mrjin]

To start I'd like to preface the question by saying I'm completely new to honing. No experience at all. I do like doing my research before doing any purchases and have a question on the width of hones. I

So to start off I see that currently wide hones which allow for honing the full razor is the norm. I however noticed that older pictures and stones are long and narrow. This requires x strokes but other than that I don't really see a disadvantage. The advantage here seems that it would be more flexible towards geometry such as smiling razors or warped razors. (Please correct me if I made a wrong estimation here)

Now my question is there a downside to narrow hones that I'm plainly not aware of. As a complete novice with only the Internet and no mentor, I completely lack any kind of common sense on this topic.

Welcome to the rabbit hole. Ideally, the razor edge should be straight, and hone surface should be dead flat, so you will get theoretically best edge with just simple back and forth stokes on a wide stone, nice and easy. But the reality is that neither most of the razors edges are straight nor most of the stones are flat out of the box. I would expect in most of the cases, you either get a warped razor or a stone not flat, or even both.

With a straight edge on a wide stone not flat(not necessarily convex, just not flat, if you ever lapped a stone, you will see what I meant), you can get a way with x strokes. But if the edge is warped, the stone is wide and dead flat, you can hone the convex side of the edge well with x stroke, but you will have some difficult time dealing with the concave side. With a narrow stone, it would be much easier, as long as you don't damage the edge that's not on the stone.

 

[Onimaho]

Welcome to the rabbit hole. Ideally, the razor edge should be straight, and hone surface should be dead flat, so you will get theoretically best edge with just simple back and forth stokes on a wide stone, nice and easy. But the reality is that neither most of the razors edges are straight nor most of the stones are flat out of the box. I would expect in most of the cases, you either get a warped razor or a stone not flat, or even both.

With a straight edge on a wide stone not flat(not necessarily convex, just not flat, if you ever lapped a stone, you will see what I meant), you can get a way with x strokes. But if the edge is warped, the stone is wide and dead flat, you can hone the convex side of the edge well with x stroke, but you will have some difficult time dealing with the concave side. With a narrow stone, it would be much easier, as long as you don't damage the edge that's not on the stone.

Yeah. I have the sneaky suspension that my razor might have a slight warp. I do speak hypothetically considering my lack of experience. I'm mostly basing it on my experience of 10 years ago. I had a dovo best quality and that razor sung. This while my current Böker is a bit dull even after honing by two different people respectively to 12 and 30k. It definitely doesn't sing as I remember my dovo doing.

Unfortunately I went on a 10 year hiatus and the shop that originally honed my razor is out of business. So I'm going to try and hone it up myself. Trying with narrow stones in the hope of improving the edge.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Wide hones are mostly for woodworking tools/wide flat chisels/that sort of stuff. Some razor honers (especially WAY back when... driven by questionable recommendations) did seek out 3" wide hones under the thinking it simplified honing to not do an X stroke. This is why Nortons and CNat's had their period where they got fairly popular. They were the "Cheapest" way to get 3" wide hones. Welsh slates and a few other hones kind of followed that pattern... of not actually being that great, but being available 3" wide and cheap so people liked em.

But once you hone a few razors... and especially once you've bought a few dozen, hundred, or thousand old razors that needed a full edge fix... and often have uneven hone wear, some amount of warping, and other issues... You find that the idea of "not needing any lateral motion" in honing... even with a perfect, brand new razor, is a bad bad assumption and goal. And most (not all) move away from "needing" a 3" hone. You can still use a 3" (or wider) hone... but it can actually be MORE challenging in many cases... not easier. And it's certainly not something that should guide your hone shopping decisions.

From my perspective... Once I got decent at honing and was buying 50+ razors a month on eBay and just blowing through getting them shave ready and selling/pif'ing them... I spent a fairly long time looking for a 1" wide and 10"+ long Coticule (and other similarly narrow hones).
These days, I like the 1.5-2" wide that is kind of the historical width for hones for razors. You'll find some hones outside that... but they're either smaller (1" wide) for cost saving reasons or wider but far, far, far rarer. 5x2.5" is a faiiiirly common cut for coticules... but you'll find a hundred 7x1.5" ones for every 5x2.5" one you find. There's one company that made a 7x2.5" Thuri and a couple makers had 5 and 6 x 2.5" ones... but again... ULTRA rare.

I could go on with examples.

Price the same? Yeah I'll take an 8x3" over a 8x2"... but I really wouldn't pay any more for it (except for collectability/rarity's sake)... and when I was still doing a LOT of razor honing? I'd make sure I had a <2" wide hone in my arsenal... and probably a 1" wide one still.

 

[Onimaho]

Wide hones are mostly for woodworking tools/wide flat chisels/that sort of stuff. Some razor honers (especially WAY back when... driven by questionable recommendations) did seek out 3" wide hones under the thinking it simplified honing to not do an X stroke. This is why Nortons and CNat's had their period where they got fairly popular. They were the "Cheapest" way to get 3" wide hones. Welsh slates and a few other hones kind of followed that pattern... of not actually being that great, but being available 3" wide and cheap so people liked em.

But once you hone a few razors... and especially once you've bought a few dozen, hundred, or thousand old razors that needed a full edge fix... and often have uneven hone wear, some amount of warping, and other issues... You find that the idea of "not needing any lateral motion" in honing... even with a perfect, brand new razor, is a bad bad assumption and goal. And most (not all) move away from "needing" a 3" hone. You can still use a 3" (or wider) hone... but it can actually be MORE challenging in many cases... not easier. And it's certainly not something that should guide your hone shopping decisions.

From my perspective... Once I got decent at honing and was buying 50+ razors a month on eBay and just blowing through getting them shave ready and selling/pif'ing them... I spent a fairly long time looking for a 1" wide and 10"+ long Coticule (and other similarly narrow hones).
These days, I like the 1.5-2" wide that is kind of the historical width for hones for razors. You'll find some hones outside that... but they're either smaller (1" wide) for cost saving reasons or wider but far, far, far rarer. 5x2.5" is a faiiiirly common cut for coticules... but you'll find a hundred 7x1.5" ones for every 5x2.5" one you find. There's one company that made a 7x2.5" Thuri and a couple makers had 5 and 6 x 2.5" ones... but again... ULTRA rare.

I could go on with examples.

Price the same? Yeah I'll take an 8x3" over a 8x2"... but I really wouldn't pay any more for it (except for collectability/rarity's sake)... and when I was still doing a LOT of razor honing? I'd make sure I had a <2" wide hone in my arsenal... and probably a 1" wide one still.

Thank you for the history and context. Everything is making a lot more sense.

Thank you to everyone for the help! I'm glad I asked the 'stupid' question.

 

[Gamma]

There is no norm. Some people prefer one thing, others prefer something else. X strokes work on any hone.
I would not want to do restoration work, or heavy bevel setting on a narrow stone. Can be done, just don't want to do it that way.
In general, I don't really enjoy any stones under 2" wide.
If someone says type A width or type B width is 'preferable' - they probably mean it is preferable to them. There really no hard metrics proving anything one way or another.

Try stuff. See what YOU like. Make that YOUR norm.

 

[mrjin]

Yeah. I have the sneaky suspension that my razor might have a slight warp. I do speak hypothetically considering my lack of experience. I'm mostly basing it on my experience of 10 years ago. I had a dovo best quality and that razor sung. This while my current Böker is a bit dull even after honing by two different people respectively to 12 and 30k. It definitely doesn't sing as I remember my dovo doing.

Unfortunately I went on a 10 year hiatus and the shop that originally honed my razor is out of business. So I'm going to try and hone it up myself. Trying with narrow stones in the hope of improving the edge.

Then I would suggest try get one and only one set from the same serials of the same vendor and stick to it. That's to avoid too many variables. I learned that in a really hard way. Naniwa Arata serials or Shapton RockStart serials work really well for me. But I do think there are two stones to avoid, Shapton Kuromaku Pro 12K and RockStar 16K. I started with a set of Shapton Kuromaku Pro, from 1K to 12K and the 12K was a dud. I did not realize that and started buying more stones. Now I have 5 sets of stones, all work really well with the exception of the Shapton Kuromaku Pro 12K and RockStar 16K. All those different stones probably made the time to constantly get a decent edge 5 times longer. And I'm still buying new stones, I recon that's probably a medical condition .

Regarding razors singing, I tends to think it has something to do with the ground, I think I do have a couple of them singing, but most of the don't. The feel on the skin might be different, but the shaves have little difference.

You can probably figure out how to use a narrow hone pretty easily once you managed to get good edge on wide ones. Before that, I feel you might demage the edge easily with a misstroke.

I'm using a very small JNAT about 11cm x 3cm which I bought as Tomo Nagura to finish warp razors. I never expected it to work but it works surprisingly well.

 

[mrjin]

There is no norm. Some people prefer one thing, others prefer something else. X strokes work on any hone.
I would not want to do restoration work, or heavy bevel setting on a narrow stone. Can be done, just don't want to do it that way.
In general, I don't really enjoy any stones under 2" wide.
If someone says type A width or type B width is 'preferable' - they probably mean it is preferable to them. There really no hard metrics proving anything one way or another.

Try stuff. See what YOU like. Make that YOUR norm.

Different tools for different scenarios I would say. I do prefer wide hones in most of the cases, but narrow ones work really well on finishing warped razors.

 

[Koop]

Regarding razors singing, I tends to think it has something to do with the ground, I think I do have a couple of them singing, but most of the don't. The feel on the skin might be different, but the shaves have little difference.

I agree with this. The "singing" razor is a harmonic created due to a consequence of the grind - i.e. blade thickness, width and overall mass.

 

[Stapelfeld]

Most stones are 8x3 because most people use them for kitchen knives and pocket knives, that seems to be the majority of the market, the honing scene is not that big. If I was a whetstone company I would probably focus on that big part of the market rather than a niche sector.

The narrower stones I think were a lot more prominent back in the day because more people used straight razors in the past plus barbers were allowed to shave multiple customers with them.

They have the advantage that if a razor has a geometry issue it kinda bypasses that, I’ve seen too many razors on eBay that were supposed to have a beautiful smile get ruined because someone ground down the spine to fix that geometry issue.

 

[Frank Shaves]

Most Japanese synthetic stones are 210 x 70 mm which feels luxurious/spacious to me. The size of natural stones depends on the availability of quality stone. For example, Ardennes-Coticule would need to discard huge amounts of Coticule stone if they only sold 210 x 70 mm Coticules and the cost of a 210 x 70 mm Coticule would break the bank. The cost natural stones increases dramatically by area and volume.

Then there is bench versus hand holding. Most normal human beings would get tired trying to hold a 12 x 3 x 2 inch stone.

If I was worth $365 billion, I would try to buy natural stones between 5 x 2 and 7 x 2.5 inches. I like to hand hold and I seldom venture outside of the 7 x 2.5 rectangle. I also don't like luxury automobiles. But that's me.

P.S. I also have a 125 x 30 mm Coticule that I use to build moral character.