Thread: shaving soap for honing?

Hello gents has anyone ever tried using the "old type shaving creams" from cans and honing with itBeen told it lubricates the blade a lot better than waterUsed old can of barbasol shaving cream and seems to stay on the honing stone longer.Anyone have any feedback?Thank you.

Just tried it . . . honing with shaving soap.


Blade is still crap . . . and I have all these slivers of shave soap everywhere . . .'

Not sure this is gonna work . . .

Originally Posted by Shaotzu

Just tried it . . . honing with shaving soap.


Blade is still crap . . . and I have all these slivers of shave soap everywhere . . .'

Not sure this is gonna work . . .

did you use soap or cream?no problem here works greati used the old type shaving CREAM and it stays on the stone,i use about 4 stones depending the shape of the blade.Have you been honing long?iI do not know what shape your blade is like,do you have a bevel on the blade?if you do not have a bevel it will NEVER work.You create a bevel with a 1000 grit honing stone.

You're supposed to use a stone too?? Oh, was just trying it on the bar of soap.

(Just making a joke ...)

I know some guys like to use a little lather on barber hones. I've tried it and i think it works well because water doesn't really stay on them. If your talking about shaving foam from a can, that's a little different. I would think it would dry out kind of fast. I personally wouldn't put anything but water on my whetstones though.

Have read before of people using lather on various stones to try achieve a better edge than with water. Coticules was one and a barber I know said they used to call them soap stones because of the fact they used lather on them. Try having a search through the honing forum or using the advanced search for lather on stones.

I slap lather on my barbers hone...works great. 10 laps on an imp, strop and shave. Iva shaved with 1 razor with good steel for a year doing this. I think i posted last january the imp i was testing with. good steel. The barbers hone is a shumate. Fits right in your hand.

HA,HA,HA-----that was funny on a bar of soap:rock
well,here's the story on honing:most of my stones are pure stone except for a few ceramic naniwa's.I put my stones in a small plastic tub and soak them for 15 minutes,that flushes the air out of the stone plus makes the top part of stone easy to work with.After this I start with 1000 grit stone to set a bevel on blade that's being honed,from there I can go all the way to a 12,000 grit ,but usually stop after using my coticule stone as an 8000 stone.while the stone is still wet I put shaving foam on top of stone and start honing away,if the razor that you are using had been honed prior ,then just use the 8000 grit to bring it up to par.