Honing a straight razor

[Anonymous No.2005726]

My dad got me this a few years ago and after a few months it started to pull too much so I stopped using it
My gf got me a Norton 4000/8000, some chromium oxide and a strop for Christmas to hone/strop it again but no matter how long I go at it, I can’t get the HHT to work.
It’s a bit better than before but still not as good as it was.
Saw some dude on YouTube reset a bevel and hone to HHT with one of those $10k Japanese storms in like 50 passes.
What am I doing wrong? I read that the Norton doesn’t cut as fast as Nakayama stones or Coticule.
Do I just not have the right tools for this or am I using the ones I have wrong?

[Anonymous No.2005730]

You're supposed to stripe it before each use. It's pretty difficult to get the angle right on a stone. Maybe you can find a place locally that can sharpen it.

[Anonymous No.2005733]

>>2005730
No there’s def a guy. It’s just that to me half the point of not using disposable razors is being self sufficient. If I need a guy to sharpen it for me all the time, it defeats a lot of the purpose for me.
I used to strop after each use and oil it but I didn’t use chromium oxide before and my other strop wasn’t that good.

[Anonymous No.2005737]

Sell it to a retarded hipster and use a safety razor.

[Anonymous No.2005740]

>>2005733
Then you're just going to have to keep practicing. Or maybe ask him how he does it. I've had mine for almost a year and never sharpened it.

[Anonymous No.2005746]

>>2005726
Work on your consistency, you are working with an edge so fragile that one messed up pass at the wrong angle and you dun goofed. But you will get there with time. Besides that, >>2005730 is dead right, strop BEFORE use, never after.
Now that i think about it, most razor related videos i've seen are complete autism, they rarely get the blade position right even, look up "how to sharpen a plane blade", quite few of those show proper bodywork to retain consistentcy through the motion.

[Anonymous No.2005748]

>>2005737
I would but I’m trying to use this as an opportunity to learn about knife maintenance and care. Also I get sentimental about gifts from my dad.
I know it was expensive for him to get and it’s his way of reaching out to me and trying to connect on something, I think.
>>2005740
Cheers. Pretty much what I read online. Part of what makes it hard to do something you haven’t done before is that on some level you don’t believe it can be done until you see it with your own eyes. I was wondering if someone here had experience learning to sharpen a knife, had encountered some of the same difficulties I’m dealing with, and had some thoughts on what I might be doing wrong. Perhaps suggest the video or tutorial that set them on the right path.

[Anonymous No.2005749]

>>2005726
>What am I doing wrong?

The grade of stones you have are for refining an already very sharp edge. If you have been careless you have likely damaged your edge well past the point of being able to repair it with such high grade stones unless you spend hours on them. Best course is to look at the edge under magnification (a 10x jewellers loupe is fine) step back down to 800, inspect, step down further if necessary, then work your way back up.

[Anonymous No.2005750]

>>2005746
Thanks! On the polishing/finishing step, do you really only apply knife-weight pressure?
Assuming I get each step right and don’t mess up the bevel, how many passes is should it take, more or less?

[Anonymous No.2005752]

>>2005749
Cheers. I borrowed a jewelers 10x zeiss and it looks ok to me but I don’t have any frame of reference. I guess I need more stones. I think there is a guy at work who might have some.
Appreciate the response

[Anonymous No.2005756]

>>2005750
The absolute finishing step is supposed to even the edge out and remowe the last bits of potential burr and stuff (pre stropping), very gentle pressure is enough, would not take the pressure off completelly because then the razor might kink and you end up with worse edge than before the polish. As for passes, it all depends on your blade, stones, how heavy handed you are, do it until it's scary sharp. You will figure that out.

[Anonymous No.2005804]

>>2005730
>It's pretty difficult to get the angle right on a stone
You use the spine as an angle guide.

[Caveman !ZrDebyJajE No.2005824]

If you maintain the edge properly it should only need to be sharpened every 3 or 4 years. I do 40 to 50 passes on the canvas side of the strop and then 50 on the leather before each use. Use the back of the blade as a guide if you need to sharpen it, it's easy to fuck the angle and cause more work. The first time I had to sharpen it I went to my barber and asked his advice.

[Anonymous No.2005844]

>>2005824
I tried this but homie shut down. We had discussed me bringing my straight razor a while ago but I’m in one of those places where barbers and hairdressers vanished March last year and haven’t come back since.

[Anonymous No.2005853]

>>2005726
I used to shave with one of these. If it shaves well, don't worry about the HHT, it's mostly a meme or a parlor trick, not an actual practical test. It's also a bit technique dependent. I stopped straight shaving because it turned out to be more expensive and more time consuming and lower quality of a shave than just getting a really good DE safety with quality blades.

Very few times in life will you have the option for something that is better, faster, and cheaper.

[Anonymous No.2005857]

>>2005853
I totally feel this but I’m this city kid with no practical skills. I’m in my late 20s but I figured this was a good chance to at least learn how to sharpen a knife.
Maybe it’s some meme and it’s never something I’ll need to do but I think it would make me a bit happier if I could learn to do this for myself. Does that make sense?

[Anonymous No.2005865]

>>2005726
I have shaved with a straight razor for more years than I can remember. I found the key to sharpening it (or anything else for that matter) is the ability to feel the wire edge form on the opposite edge from that in contact with the stone. When that forms, it is not going to get any sharper. Break it off with a few strokes through a hard wood like oak and strop to polish. Thereafter, strop before shaving. I don't have to sharpen more than every few months or so.

[Anonymous No.2005884]

>>2005857
I learned how to sharpen chefs knives by watching burrfection on yt. Watch some of the older knife sharpening videos and he constantly talks about technique. It gave me an understanding of what is happening to the burr in my minds eye with each motion, and I think that understanding is critical.

[Anonymous No.2005930]

Hard to say without being there with you, holding your dick, while you sharpen. There's a hundred mistakes you could be making. More than likely you just aren't actually sharpening the the blade when you hone it. That's the most common beginner mistake. A hone is kind of like a file, it's one direction, and you don't gain anything by just lightly passing the blade along it. You kind of lay the razor flat, twist it a bit to put pressure on the edge (assuming you want to cut on the edge, which you almost always do, but you put the pressure on whatever you're trying to hone) and then fairly firmly you make your pass, making sure the blade is actually grinding fairly hard across the stone surface, not just sliding on top of it. It takes quite a bit of practice to do this right. You don't want to do too much pressure, for instance, to the point where you can see the razor blade bending (not that hard to do when you consider many of them are basically paper thin)

Other things that could be wrong is that the bevel was never set right, but if it shaved ok before then it must have been set good enough at least. You can always lay your razor on a true flat surface, and look to see if it lays nice and flat on it, doesn't wobble, that's a good indicator your bevel is fine.

[Anonymous No.2005956]

>>2005726
Visit SRP. They have tons of posts how to properly hone. These guys can answer any question with great detail.
I'm super lazy and haven't learned how to proper hone ;(

SRP is straight razor place dot com

[Anonymous No.2005961]

>>2005865
>Break it off with a few strokes through a hard wood like oak and strop to polish.

Don't break it with wood, use the strip like you're supposed to. Or better yet the buffing wheel with some 0.1 micron diamond paste or even finer.

[Anonymous No.2006668]

i feel you op, i also failed at bringing back gramps straight razor back to live
i consider buying a cheap used for practice so i dont fuck mine up to bad

honers, how to you flatten your stones (if at all) ?

[Anonymous No.2006689]

>>2005726

Pay someone to do it, you probably ruined the edge being an unskilled monkey. Sharpening a straight to razor takes a surprising amount of skill

[Anonymous No.2007097]

>>2006668

Bunch of different ways you could do it. You could use a diamond plate, or an actual dedicated flattening stone like in pic, or you could use a flat surface with some sandpaper on it. Don't start getting nutty and fussing over just how flat things need to be, like in terms of thousandths of an inch, it only need to be flat like a ruler's edge might be (which isn't all that flat). It's not a super precise, machining type flat, just carpenter's type flat, if that makes any sense.

> Sharpening a straight to razor takes a surprising amount of skill

Kinda true. Having learned to do it, it's one of those things when you figure it out, you're just like, "Oh...shit, well this is actually pretty easy." more than anything it's just about throwing away all your dumb ideas and hangups, getting out of your own way, and realizing it's pretty straightforward and simple, but it takes practice to get to that point. Go on ebay and get some trashed razors on the cheap and practice, it's the only way to learn. Personally I ruined 2 of those before I got it down.

[Anonymous No.2007376]

>>2006689
I had a guy lined up early last year but he ghosted on me when the lockdowns started.
How do you transition from the unskilled monkey phase to having some skill if not by practicing?
Even with some innate skill, I assume some hands on practice is eventually required

[Anonymous No.2007508]

>>2007097
do you have experience with cheap ali diamond plates and how they hold up?

ive tried a lot for flattening, a chunk of silicon carbide, concrete, sandpaper but my stones are ridiculous hard bound, especially 2 made out of binder free corundum