Hones - what do you use?

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Just curious what hones, or progressions, people are using.

I nicked Neil's cheapskate suggestion from the sticky and went with the King 1k/6k, Muller stone and Chinese natural. Most of the time I go with the king 1k > 6k > Chinese. Sometimes paste to finish up. I'm finding that when things are working the stones are great on their own but if I can't quite get things just right the pastes are an easy fix. I've heard a fair bit that the jump from the 1k to the 6k is huge but even without slurries it seems a fine pace for me, at least whilst learning.

On another note can I ask what you do after honing. I've heard people shaving straight from the stone, people who just use a few strops on leather and others who up the amount of time spent on leather and fabric if coming straight from the hone as opposed to a previous shave.

Perhaps favourite finishers too if you don't mind.
 
I think that people who say that it is a huge leap (King 1k/6k) just have not used the stone. In use, the 1k side is a very fast cutter, more like a 2k, and the 6k side I find more like a 5k, so the leap isn't really that large. And - as you say - selective use of slurry technique further reduces the gap.

The old barber manuals mostly say that fabric is not necessary after honing, just leather - that's what I do (but I use two different leathers - I like to be awkward!). I have shaved right off the stone, but the edge is a trifle too keen usually - stropping on leather tames and smooths it a bit. Many people say that the optimum edge is not reached until the freshly honed edge has been stropped fully at least three times.

Regards,
Neil
 
Depending on how bad the bevel is, my progression is DMT 600; a small German waterstone around the 1.5 - 2k mark at a guess (that's the weak link at the moment); King 6k; Thuringian. Sometimes I've been using a greenish mystery hone or a black Arkansas for finishing to ring the changes, but both of them are very slow cutters and oil stones to boot, which is not good if you have tape on.

Those produce a shaveable edge, but newspaper stropping improves things noticeably, and I always strop on leather too: two types as Neil says. I firmly believe that the blade becomes more pleasant to use after a few shaves and stroppings: it calms down and loses that over eager feel.
 
I would like to try a coticule but I'm just getting the hang of the king combo stone and the Chinese stone. I've got a thuringian and an ezy edge barber hone I really need to play around with before I buy any more stones. I've got another stone that might be a translucent Arkansas I'm quite excited about but getting it lapped flat looks like it will be more of a hobby than a task.

I'm also guilty of using two types of leather for stropping much of the time - an old bench strop then onto the latigo. I've not yet decided if the untreated side of the latigo works wonders on hollow grinds or if I just really like the noise it makes.

I'll need to give the newspaper a shot. Any advice on which publication works best Andy? Times modern on a broadsheet, or full color on the Sport?
 
Word amongst the cognoscienti is that you want lots of ink, so a big full page ad or photo maybe. Can't honestly say it makes the blindest bit of difference in my experience so far. A broadsheet (remember them?) would be nice.

Lapping a translucent Arkansas, eh? Good luck with that :twisted:
 
Newsprint definitely works, but opinion is divided on why. In a series of tests stropping was performed on ordinary paper, plain newsprint paper and inked newsprint paper. All had an effect, increasing in that order; ie inked newsprint was best. Clearly then, the paper contributes something but the most dramatic effect is due to the ink.

Depending on where you are in the world and what type of paper you read, the effect will most likely vary. Some modern papers use a type of colour inkjet technology, most papers use pigment in a carrier of vegetable oil (usually a soy derivative) and older formulations of ink had the pigment carried in a petroleum-based (mineral oil) binder.

I think that the main contributing factor is the pigment - most blacks use carbon/graphite compounds and some colours have chromium in them. Carbon is recognised for refining the edge of a razor (I use a graphite coated strop, for instance) and in newspaper ink we are talking of a grit size of around 0.1 microns - very fine indeed, hence the need for a lot of stropping with newspaper!

20 or so years ago it was quite normal for the carrier to be oil - it left a mess on your hands, window cleaners used bunched-up newspapers to impart a final shine on windows and you could use a bit of putty to pull an image off a sheet of newspaper. This oiliness and the way they tried to get around the problem may be the reason why newspaper stropping worked better in the past. 'Driers' were used to reduce the oiliness - a common drier was a powder called litharge, also known as lead oxide. Old US military service issue strops came with a bar of lead - not only did it help in breaking in the strop, like rolling a bottle over it, but it also added something else that improved the edge of the razor. Prior to this in the late 1800s we find references to using a bar of pewter to increase the efficiency of strops - old pewter contained lead as an alloy. Even earlier references mention using sugar of lead (lead acetate) in strop dressings.

I'm not sure what the significance of using lead was, but in an old newspaper with heavy black print you had a combination of the abrasiveness of the paper itself, the abrasiveness of the carbon pigment and the (slip? lubrication? scratch filling property?) of the lead. I suppose the oil carrier was also a bonus - it would serve to coat the blade and help fight against oxidation.

Regards,
Neil
 
Well I use a chosera 1k, norton 4/8 and nawimi 12k. thats my go to progression have picked up a couple of barbers hones, a coticule and large green natural stone have yet to really exsperiment enough with any of the later ones to decide how much I like them. I have a king 1/6 but always found the 1k too slow, neil saying it is closer to a 2k could make sense then. Yet to try the newspaper yet,
 
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