I've got a stripped duratec in my garage which I'm going to rebuild, this will be my 1st engine rebuild. My question is should I carry out the cylinder honing myself or take it to a machine shop?
I've watched some youtube videos and it looks straight forward enough. Also if I do hone cylinders myself can anyone recommend a honing tool?

Cheers in advance

Home honing is in reality just deglazing
If your bores are sound with no scoring and your fitting new rings it can be done, I've done this on 2 Pinto builds.
The biggest issue and I can't state this strongly enough is properly cleaning the bores of all the grit and dust afterwards.
To give you an understanding, cleaning out the bores after honing with rags and thinners it all look clean but I could still get a dark stain on my fingers so in a moment of madness I used a clothes lint roller on the dry bores and it came out dark grey, it took half of a complete lint roller per bore to go clear and several hours.

It is so easy to do it yourself. There are several types of glaze busting tools. Most popular seems to be the type with emery stones that are spring loaded a the type like a flue brush with bobbles of emery on the ends. This type is probably the safest for a novice as if you go too low down the bore it wont damage anything when it exits.....Keep it well lubricated with paraffin on cast iron bores and wash down well.....

Thinking overnight...

1. Have you any photos of the bores?
2. Do they need honing? (I know it's good practice, but perhaps it's not always necessary)
3. What would an engine machine shop charge to do the job and what else could/would they check for you?

There is a mark at the top of the cylinder shown in photo

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The rest of the bores are fine.

Look for "Flexhone" and watch a you tube video or two. Honing proper is a sizing operation. Hand honing is a surface finishing operation.

Hi bud, your not really honing, it's de glazing as stated earlier. You don't want those new rings running without de glazing. I bought my tool from frost worked perfect. I used lots of wd40 and cleaned and cleaned for ages . It took probably 2 goes in each cylinder of about 3 minutes each time. The only issue I had was a couple of times I went too far into the cylinder and caught the lip at the bottom which tends to damage your de glazing tool stone at the end.

I deglazed my duratec bores before i fitted new forged pistons with one of those cheap spring loaded type tools with the 3 stones. To avoid the grit going everywhere, I used grease not oil to lubricate, and also used clean rags to stuff down the bores first covering the crank. As mentioned above, clean out thoroughly after!
Andy