What Straight Razor Have You Honed Lately????

Nice Gen 1 Filly there Tom.

 

Thank you Steve. I can’t let you have all the sweet Filly’s.

 

Vintage Ellison Sheffield.

Another coticule - this time La Nouvelle Veine. Full Dilucot progression - carefully and slowly diluting and maintaining good slurry. When I got to water I stopped and stropped on canvas then went back to honing with razor weight only under a trickle of water.

The razor seemed to chew its way through my beard rather then slicing the hairs. But it dealt with them extremely efficiently.

It was a lovely shave; BBS in two passes.

 

Shootouts are always fun, up last night were two 6/8 German hollows, a Dovo Bismarck and a Simmons Hardware ‘Hornet’, both good razors. The stones were a greenish Hatanaka Hatahoshi and a Nakayama kiita koppa on a fitted base. Koppa just means ‘bits and pieces’ and is the Japanese equivalent to ‘bout’ in the coticule world. You have to love ‘Guaranteed Satisfactory or No Sale’ stamped on the Simmons. The blue on the Bismarck is just a reflection of a piece of painter’s tape used to hold the background paper.

BTW, the Hatahoshi is a bit irregular on the bottom ends and does not fit well in a stone holder, but no worries, a useful trick is just to flip the stone holdsr over and put the stone on the bottom. Problem solved!

Both of these stones are on the soft side for razor hones, but both polish pretty well on clear water, so the final finish was on thin slurry followed by washing the hones and razors then adding 25 clear water strokes. Stropping was 20 canvas/35 suede/65 cordovan on a Kanoyama 80000.

Shave results in the straight razor SOTD thread!

 

I don’t have high hopes for this one. And for you professionals that take in people’s wedge razors with issues, much respect.

An unknown maker from Sheffield - Univerally Approved Best Silver Steel. I think the Royal Cipher is a “VR” and probably place it in the 1838-1850’ish period.

And this one did not want to play nice. Many layers of tape to get contact near the edge and I can now buy stock in green markers .

Three sessions over multiple days. Shifted from the Naniwa 1k to the Coticule basically because I got tired of staring at the 1k.
The toe never came in, but at this point I don’t care and can shave around that... or at least that is how I feel right now. I can’t imagine what the bevel angle is with all the tape.
Pretty sure this will be a disaster.

Might have to do a nice German hollow ground today to hopefully recoup some sanity.
Happy honing.
Tom

 

Wedges or Near Wedges Can be a Pain in the Butt..I have Honed Many a Headache...Sometimes You Need to Put More Tape on the Max Hone Wear Parts & Less Tape IF ANY on the Parts with Less or No Hone Wear...In Other Words..FILL the Hone Wear Gaps Accordingly with Patches of Tape Rather than Full Lengths..Use a Full Length of Tape as Normal for the Final Layer...

This Method Should True Up the Spine Before Ya Start or at Least Pull it in as Best Ya Can to the Factory Geometry ..Then the Bevel will be Pulled in Accordingly from Heel to Toe..

When Folks Say Honing Razors is Easy I Laugh..

Billy..

 

Thank you Billy (@Billyfergie). I’ll give that a shot. This one has a fun bow in the spine that I just didn’t do enough to account for.
Tom

 

Yes Wedges are a PITA, at times. You also have to work with Silver Steel. This is also a very hard metal. So, what I have done is to just concentrate more on the area that hasnt taken the edge yet, then continue with the entire edge, to smooth and even out the bevel.

 

Osiris 8/8


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

D'Arcy's Vulcan "7" 15/16th inch
John D'Arcy Company
St Louis


Very easy honing session. It took a keen edge, from start to finish. Finished it off on the Welsh Slate Stones, and an Arkansas Surgical black. After stropping, it is popping baby fine blonde hair, with ease, both directions. Might give it a go, tonight.

 

Interesting test of the latest hone acquisition. When I lapped it, it was plain that this stone was very, very, soft. That’s typically a bad sign for a Japanese razor hone, because there’s a truism that hardness and fineness go hand in hand. Slurrying it with a diamond plate gave instant slurry, as really it did with a typically hard razor tomo nagura. I had little hope for it, but it is a Nakayama beyond doubt because of the skin on the back, and Nakayamas can be quite fine for their hardness. It’s probably from a very shallow layer like the akepin layer.

First I just re-finished a Gold Dollar 208 and shaved with it and surprise, it shaved well. Most of my Gold Dollar test razors are shave ready to some extent, most having about an 8k-ish edge from other tests, so the question is did the new stone actually do anything? It either has no grit in it or it’s extremely unusual, so let’s find out.

My Simmons Hornet could use a little refresh from the last shootout that I did, so I established an 8k scratch pattern with the Shapton Glass HC then honed with the akepin on light slurry (which took about 2 seconds to raise). The stone replaced the 8k scratch pattern, so it has a good amount of grit in it. After my usual regimen, I washed the stone and razor well and added 25 light stokes on clear water. The edge looks good! The scratch pattern is extremely consistent and the edge itself is straight with no artifacts. How did it shave? Fantastic! I have no other stone that’s anywhere near this soft that can make a good razor edge, so the stone is an anomaly. I have quite a few stones this soft, akepins, Hakka, etc and it seems to be finer than all of them.

So when dealing with natural stones, you just have to test.

 

Bengalia
By J.J.-NY

Don't know anything about this razor, except that it took on a very very nice edge, from the time it touched the first stone. I finished on Welsh Slate Stones, and an Arkansas Surgical Black. I believe this one hasn't touched a stone, since it left the factory. Still had a poor factory edge on it, when it arrived.

 

Hamburg Ring
German Hollow Ground

PITA. Mostly my fault. I was restoring it, from some heavy rust, and when I was buffing it out, the Buffing Wheel caught it. I hadn't had that happen before, but it scared the snot out of me. It ended up with a big ding, in the middle of the blade. It took me a week before I even wanted to touch it again. But, I ground out the nick, and started from scratch. I hated this happened, to this razor. I did a lot of work on the 320 grit Norton, to get to something resembling a bevel. From there went the Norton 1k, to set the bevel. The bevel was a little bigger that I liked, even with the single layer of tape. I then used an King 1-2k stone, then an unknown fast stone of 3k/8k. From there on, I used two layers of tape, and went to the Welsh Slate Stones and the Arkie Surgical Black. It ended up taking on a fast edge, once the two layers of tape were added, and the bevel angle was slightly changed. Wickedly sharp edge, was the result.

 

Crown & Double Star
Specially Hollow Ground
German Hollow Ground

This one was rusty, and a restoration job. But, the good thing was it had little use on the blade. It took on a fast edge, from the beginning to the end. Welsh Slate Stones, and Arkie Surgical Black finished it out. Very Very sharp edge. I might give this a go, tonight.

 

My Favorite Timor straight razor, It gets out of shave recently... now its back into the business!

 

Before shipping back to Korea (@Keithmax), I had a chance to drag this smiley 7/8 Herr Razor across the hones. New scales & Torx hardware; standard hone progression (Chosera 1k, Naniwa 3k>5k>8k>10k>12K and some finishing laps on a vintage Escher waterstone. VERY hard steel producing a killer keen & smooth edge. Fairly steep learning curve shaving with this bad boy...
A joy to hone...

 

Honed My Newly Acquired Mint NOS BOCKLA by Hugo Herbertz Solingen 5/8th..Naniwa Super Progression to 12 K..Pre Finished on My Uber Smooth 12 K + Coticule & Finished on My Yellow Lake Branded Oil Stone...Took Her Off around the 17 K/18 K Mark..

Took a Spectacular Edge & the Factory Grind is Excellent..Took a Lovely Micro Bevel & Ready to Go for My Next Shave...

Billy...

 

Not a full hone but a touch up on a Genco Easy Aces.
Silently poppin hairs, And a superb shave. As always.
I touched up on .25 micron diamond pasted balsa only. I have the full pasted balsa .5. .25. .1 progression. Wanted to see I could tell difference from the 0.1u inconclusive.......

 

Pics, or it doesn't exist.

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