OK guys, here is an update.
Today I found a very tidy, small and light weight hone, which will be perfect for this idea.
At the very shortest scale she is 16.5cm with a 15.4cm usable surface, and she is 6.5cm wide. With uneven thickness mostly at 1cm but a small part is as thin as 5mm. It also has quite a bit of skin on the base and sides, one of the sides was hand sawed, so this beauty has been out of the earth for many a decade. It weighs just 215g or just over 7oz, packaging should be able to be done under 13oz.
This is a beautiful and high quality Asagi hone, extremely hard, with a good cutting speed.
After all the feedback for this proposal, I think that the optimal time a person can have the hone is 10 days. This means that the turnaround will not be too fast, but not too slow either and to ensure that everybody has the chance to try out the hone in a reasonable time frame let's limit the participation to 10 people. If it is successful it can be extended further after that. Also fewer participants means less chance that the hone will get lost in the process.
There is no obligation to purchase a hone from me, by participating in this.
I have come up with some proposed ideas on how to make this effectively work.
This rental will start in the US to keep shipping costs at a minimum and if it works and my supplier can find similar sized hones we can do another round in EU and/or UK.
This rental program will start once we have 10 participants. To be fair to everybody the order in which the stone will be passed around will be randomly selected with an internet program and will be publicly displayed.
The participation will be limited only to those who
* have been members for over 6 months
* have been shaving with the razors they hone for more than 3 months
* have not had the chance of using Japanese hones in the past
To offset the risk on my part that I will never see the stone again each participant will be required to make a $10 non refundable deposit, and will be responsible for shipping to the next participant, which is estimated to be $6 for first class with insurance in US. So for about $16 you will get the chance to try out a high quality Japanese hone for 10 days.
Since this is entirely for the benefit of the community as a whole, I am thinking that we should also allow participation of our honemeisters (those who have offered honing services for more than 3 months) regardless of whether they have Japanese hones or not. They will not need to make a deposit, just cover the shipping to the next person, but will be able to use the hone for 2 days only.
This thread is to get a list of those who are interested. For further discussion, please post in
this thread.
EDITED: To add another photo showing the hand sawed side. Its the best pic I was able to take.
Rental hone sign up.
also I can pass it to Lynn so there are 2
Linear Mode
