Thread: ONE COTICULE HONING

let me start by saying that I have tried my best to maintain the core of Bart's method (one stone, repeatable results), since "honing what I own" hasnt come easy, and I got my first decent results with Bart's old method, I was really excited by his new one, and it should be noted that when it comes to razors, I am very much in the rookie honing class.

I have tried this method on 7 identical razors, a 7 day set of sheffield steel branded "Thornhill". In the process I used 4 different coticules, to see if the hardness and cutting ability of individual stones made a difference (and also to see which coticule worked better), I started with four razors, saving the other three to be tried on the stone that gave me the greatest success, and thereby find repeatable results.



from left to right, I have a 5" pink, a 6" yellow, a 7.5" yellow.green, and an 8" yellow/green/white/purple

to try to be as exact as i could, I altered the number of strokes based on the size of the stone, with the 6" being my baseline, 30 strokes on the 6" became 23 strokes on the 8", and 36 on the 5", you get the idea

the "pink & yellow" were by far the fastest cutters, with their slurry's getting grey rather quickly during the bevel setting process, the other two took many more strokes to set the bevels and cut the arm hair, but looking under my RS 60X, it looked like the "greenies" polished much quicker ? again, i am just learning, so there could be many flaws in my thinking, but.... I was able to get all four razors shave ready. I could tell their were differences, so that told me I need to go back to the stones on one of them, but I then took my other 3 razors, only using the 6" and I was amazed ! Thanks to Bart's new method I now have a 7 day set of Shave ready blades

now I will qualify "shave ready", I got a very comfortable and smooth shave, (I will point out that it wasnt a "scary" sharp,it was like a razor I received from a premier Honemiester, but "after" I shaved with it a couple of times) but in the end all 7 razors gave a great shave, so for me, it truly did the job, and Barts method can be reproduced, even by a hone challeged guy like me.


Thanks again Bart