This page was created from Joel's Interactive Guide to Straight Razor Shaving and can be discussed in this thread[1].

In order to get your hone to work, it simply MUST be completely flat. Don't misunderstand, or take this lightly - honing with a hone that is not completely flat will simply waste your time and wear down your hone... and your razor. Without the hone being completely flat, you aren't honing the blade at the proper, and consistent angle, and are actually doing more harm than good, and rounding the edge of the blade. Just because your hone is new, doesn't mean it's flat - do yourself a favor, and ALWAYS flatten a new hone, and flatten it on a regular basis. Every few razors you hone - a quick/easy lap of the hone will flatten it, and will require minimal effort, so lap, and lap often. It's better to do a quick 3-4 pass lap/flatten every time you hone and be certain you have a perfectly flat working surface, than to lap once in a blue moon, and have to really lap the heck out of your hone.


The object of flattening your hone is to take a perfectly flat, yet abrasive surface (IE: plate glass with abrasive papers, or a DMT Diamond Plate) and rub the hone against it (using no pressure) until the hones surface is as flat as the perfectly flat surface. The methodology is quite simple - the parts of the hone that are above other parts of the hone will be worn away until they touch the most inward, or deepest portion of the hone that is not flat, thus flattening the entire hone.


Note: Not all hones need to be flattened. Incredibly hard Ceramic Hones such as the Spyderco Extra Fine will show almost NO wear after a tremendous amount of use - however ALL water stones need to be flattened, and on a regular basis.

Well, there are numerous ways, and different individuals have different methods of doing so, some choose to use abrasive papers and plate glass, others use special flattening stones, and some use diamond plates. Personally, I find Diamond plates to work significantly better than any other method, and to boot, it is much, MUCH quicker, easier, and mess free to do with Diamond Plates. The particular plate I use, and the one that will be used in this tutorial is a DMT model D8C - which I choose both for it's size (it is large enough to accommodate all of my hones) and it's effectiveness with ANY grit of hone, and a hone made of any material. Don't pay any attention, or worry about the D8C plate being too coarse to use on a high grit, superfine hone, as the DMT will leave no scratches in your hones, nor will it leave any coarse abrasive compound in your hones. This process can be used whether you are using abrasive papers, flattening stones, etc.

DMT D8C plate mounted to a universal (rubber) hone mount (The hone mount isn't necessary, as the diamond plates come with 4 small rubber numbs you can put on them so they don't slide around, but the universal hone mounts are inexpensive, and make the process easier)...



In this example, I am going to flatten the most versatile, common and widely used straight razor hone - the Norton 4K/8K, as that is what most of you will be lapping as well.


Here is the DMT D8C mounted to the universal rubber hone mount, with a Norton 4/8K on top of it to show the size of the DMT VS the Norton for reference...

Soak your Norton 4/8K for about 15 minutes or so, as if you were going to use it to hone a razor, and while the hone soaks, put your DMT Diamond Plate on a stable surface that you don't mind getting wet - and locate a pencil.

After the hone has soaked for about 15 minutes, take the hone out of the water, and use your pencil to draw on the hone - checkerboard pattern, back and forth, diagonal - whatever pattern you use or prefer, it doesn't matter - so long as the pattern covers a large portion of the hone and is on all of the edges/corners. In this example, I am drawing on the white, 4K side of the 4K/8K. (Note: if you are using a 2-sided hone, you have to lap/flatten BOTH sides using the same process)

Put water on the DMT D8C plate, and place the hone on the D8C plate with the pencil drawing side of the hone, face down on the diamond plate.

Move the Norton back and forth across the diamond plate (circular motions as well will work, or a combination of the two) while being careful not to add ANY pressure to the hone - let the diamond plate to the work. In a short period of time, you'll start to see the water turn milky white (based on the color of the hone, the color can/will be different, so for the 8K side of the Norton, it would be a yellowish milk) which is showing you the Diamond Plate is doing its job, and leveling the Norton by removing the areas of the hone touching the plate.

This is where the silly pencil markings come in. Periodically pick up the Norton off of the Diamond Plate and check the pencil markings to see if, and where they exist. The object of the exercise is to continue to lap the Norton against the diamond plate until there are no more pencil markings left. As you can see below - SOME of the pencil markings were lapped right off, where as others were more stubborn and took a bit to become lapped out. This means my hone was NOT flat, as if it were, the pencil marks would quickly, easily and uniformly disappear. Once all of the pencil marks are gone, it means the hone is perfectly flat, as ALL portions of the hone are now touching the lapping plate - and the lapping plate is flat!

Pick up the hone, you should see a milky residue left from the hone on the plate...



Notice in the picture below where the pencil markings are? This means the part of the hone with pencil markings is not touching the lapping plate, thus the parts of the hone that have NO pencil markings on them must be worn down to the point where the parts of the hone with pencil markings are touching the perfectly flat lapping plate - thus making the hone perfectly flat...



Again, remember to flatten your hones often! A flat hone is a useful hone.