The hone being in good order, the blade is laid flat on it and moved over its surface with circular sweeps. The method of doing this is easily acquired, and is best learned by watching an expert cutler at work. If we could only hit it, the perfection of this operation would be to wear down the sides of the blade until they just met; they would then form a keen and perfect edge. Unfortunately we cannot always hit this point exactly; we are apt to overdo the matter just a little, and then comes up the _bête noir_ of beginners—the “wire edge.” This is caused by the metal of the blade bending away from the hone as soon as it becomes of a certain degree of thinness. Once it does this it cannot be worn off by the hone, and the only way to remove it is to draw the edge of the knife or razor across a piece of horn or hard wood. After removing the wire edge in this way, give the blade one or two sweeps on the hone and then strop it. If the blade be very soft, the wire edge comes very quickly and easily, and is very hard to get rid of. On very hard blades the wire edge is not so apt to make its appearance. It comes, however, on very excellent blades. It may be avoided in a measure by driving the blade edge-first over the hone, and indeed the blade should always be sharpened most in this way. And since the backward and forward strokes are always nearly equal, as regards space passed over, this is accomplished by exerting a greater pressure on the forward than on the backward stroke. This wire edge is a nasty thing when it breaks off on the hone. Unless removed it will very speedily ruin a fine knife, therefore look out for it and wipe off the hone carefully if you have any suspicion that particles of steel have broken off the blade and got on to it. In honing, as in everything else, however, nothing but practice will impart skill, and he who intends to become an expert should practice on a few old razors, grinding, honing and stropping them himself, until he has acquired the art of giving them an edge far keener than most of the razors ordinarily used for shaving. The last operation to which the knife is subjected is that of stropping, and as the blade should be stropped after every section, it becomes important that our tools should be good and that we should know how to use them. By having two or three knives we can always avoid grinding and honing the blades ourselves, for it is then easy to hire the work done, and half a dozen knives will last a careful worker a long time with merely the aid of a good strop. But the strop he must use himself. Fortunately no great skill is required in stropping, but the strop must be a good one and is best home-made.