It was great! Mr. Bos (the other hone guy) is a walking encyclopedia. It was a pleasure talking with him about his numerous visits to hone quarries all over Europe and the people he met there. I saw a couple of Thuringian labels I didn't know, and even some European hones I never knew existed.
Fun too: talking with the kids, explaining how to sharpen razors. Most of them came to see the trains, but some of them had to be dragged away by their parents to do so. Sharp steel has a mesmerizing quality...
There were other attractions too. Someone with a huge collection of all manner of sharpeners, most of them for DE blades, but some 19th century implements designed for semi-automatic whetting and stropping of straight razors too. A Romanian gentleman with hundreds and hundreds of DE blade wrappers. The museum's own Station Barber (employed full time!), barbering, guiding visitors around his shop, and staging straight shaving demonstrations.
Theo Doeleman (the 'victim' in one of the pictures of such a demonstration and organizer of the meeting) was a perfect host: apart from bringing top pieces from his own Barbering Museum, he saw to the logistic and security side of things, and had arranged for copious amounts of coffee, tea, cheese and ham rolls.
Knowledge was exchanged twix participants, and between participants and visitors. Goods too: I had some DE wrappers I got with some stones which turned out to be missing in the wrappers collection; Theo gave away a Coticule he got with safety razors to a budding straight shaving visitor and sold four of them for a tenner to a participant. The one he gave away, beautifully dished by years of barber's use, was subsequently exchanged for a useable lapped stone and landed with a collector. A 8/8'' Tiger razor (fine example of early Puma craze) changed hands for 20 euro, high end 5/8'' NOS Solingens for 15. And so on and so forth.
It was great fun! Pressed to think of misgivings, I'd probably say that because of the setting with lots of unbriefed visitors (and lots of hone guys' absence!) it did not come to much serious honing, and discussing thereof. Oh, and the lack of a borrel afterwards...
Enough of that - pics! The PR guy at the Railroadmuseum today was so kind as to send me a few. I made some too, but I haven't even seen those myself; I left my camera when I visited a friend afterwards.
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