Thread: Attaining consistency?

Originally Posted by FatboySlim

Thanks for the encouragement. If I didn't spend so much time practicing this, it wouldn't bother me so much when I hit a wall. The lead factor in causing me to switch from vintage DEs to straights way back was the possibility of honing my own "custom" shaving edges myself. So it matters to me.

Rather than keep banging into that wall, I opted to swallow hard and just do a do-over. If the complete do-over didn't work, then maybe I've really gone off the rails somewhere, and would send it out for a re-hone.

Last night I took it all the way down to DMT 1200, then BBW with slurry, then my "soft" coticule, then my new "hard" coticule, finishing with a Nakayama Asagi and a good stropping. Back when I bought it, I never actually took it all the way back down to 1200 grit. I just "refined" it starting with a coticule and light slurry, as I felt it was pretty close.

Just 90 minutes later, with only a bit less razor for the honing, I'm back in business. The Le Grelot 1/4 grind is as good as it ever got, readily popping hair again. Maybe I went off track somewhere in over-honing, then made it worse by insisting on staying at the upper grits to remove the chip. With so many strokes, maybe I rounded the bevel. I'm inclined now to still send it off to a honemeister to evaluate and honestly critique, just to make sure the new bevel and progression are sound and that I'm not going to repeating my mistakes.

Good deal man, working like a dog on the lower grits will ALWAYS pay off. Even if you go to the next grit-level and "find" some ugly spots that weren't apparent at 1200 (seems to happen to me often on a full restore)... drop back down and do it over.

Low grit honing is king, the rest is just...well, finishing.