Day 18/31 of Looking for Serenity in Austerity: Hone Day Edition

• Brush: Semogue Owner's Club (cherry wood and boar) (18)
• Razor: Zwilling J. A. Henckels Friodur 50 (7/8", hollow ground, stainless steel, masonic deco) (1)
• Lather: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! Roman Spice
• Post Shave: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! Roman Spice
• Fragrance: Spearhead Shaving Company – Seaforth! Roman Spice

It's honing weekend in the HoneMeisterschaft! I.e., the first time since August started participants actually should do something 😅

My setup

I have a fairly minimalist honing setup. For instance, despite being tempted on multiple occasions, I have not yet dived into the natural stone finishers. I have a Naniwa 3k/10k Super Stone combination stone, a lapping plate to keep it flat, and a big bag full of styrofoam packing peanuts (actual styro, not the starch-based bio-degradable ones). I also have a Jeweller's loupe, but I'm not using it anymore. That's it.

The 3k side is maybe a bit fine for setting bevels, but with a bit of patience, I've also managed that in the past (even on chonky vintage wedges with wide bevels).

My Process

Is partially copied from "Simple Straight Razor Honing" on Science of Sharp, but instead of counting strokes, I rely on how the razor feels on the hone and, most importantly, the @gcgallant@sub.wetshaving.social packing peanut test (here shown on a styrofoam deco ball, but packing peanuts are cheaper and work just as well).

Starting out honing razors, the most difficult part for me was to figure out what works and what doesn't. I'd frequently spend an hour or more honing a razor without palpable progress. I tried to visualise progress using loupes, a microscope lens, etc. Every once in a while, I'd get that glorious edge through trial and error, but the lack of reproducibility was frustrating. At some point, @gcgallant@sub.wetshaving.social shared with me how he uses packing peanuts to test the progress he makes during honing, and it's been the missing link to get reproducible sharp edges. Styrofoam has thin membranes around porous beads or puffs. It's a bit like a tomato in that a sharp knife slices through the skin effortlessly and allows you to make clean cuts, while a blunt knife struggles to cut the skin and crushes the meat underneath. Packing peanuts are like that and make the difference between more and less sharp parts of the edge obvious. Except, the peanuts all feel exactly the same.

Even though a few laps on the finisher would have been just fine for refreshing today, I decided to do the whole process.

I soaked the water stone for a bit over ten minutes. It hasn't been lapped in a while and looks correspondingly dirty in the water bath.

There were a few dished areas of the stone,

and lapping both sides flat took a while.

With a freshly flattened and soaked stone, I started off by thoroughly killing the edge,

An then rebuilt it with trailing edge strokes on the 3k side, frequently interrupting to check my progress on packing peanuts. At first, progress is very fast and some areas of the edge become noticeably sharper than others. This shows where to apply more pressure and when the edge felt uniformly sharp, I moved over to the finisher side. Same process again, trailing edge strokes and peanut tests until it's uniformly sharp enough to just melt into the styrofoam.

To finish, I stropped on chromium oxide-loaded canvas for a few laps to get any potential burrs of and smooth out any potential rough bits (I only use loaded canvas right after honing, and only clean canvas and leather after that) and test again on the peanut. (The reason for that last test is that some razors I've honed for the first time got really sharp on the peanut test, but after stropping would feel horrible. The edges would just crumble during the first shave. This can be remedied by killing the edge and start over from a coarse stone to cut away the weak surface steel).

My Shave

Now I'm not sure how it went for everyone else, but my blade did not really need a refresh of its edge yet, so I wasn't sure what to expect from the refresh. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a huge difference. The fool's pass did feel noticeably smoother, and that's always nice.

Great shave today, and I'm looking forward to reading all the honing posts today. Have a great Sunday!

$FriodomRiders $HoneMeisterschaft $RawHoggin