I've been using my dovo 'special' from Tony Miller for about a month now (just stropping before every shave), and have had good results (Tony honed it for me before he sent it). However, for the last three shaves or so I have noticed some decline in performance, and so I decided to hone it. This experience has given me a few observations, as well as some questions.
First some background. I prepared my Norton 4K/8K previously (on a glass pane using fine grit sandpaper) and I feel fairly confident that it is flat etc; so I went ahead and soaked the stone in water for about 15min and started to hone. I started by making 10 passes (1 pass = up and down the stone) and doing the HHT. This didn't give a satisfactory result so I repeated the procedure (another 10 passes followed by a test). I had to do this roughly 3 times, but I never really got a good result; at least not as well as when I received it from Tony (it dragged too much as it cut the hair). I must point out that I tried to keep as little pressure as possible on the razor while honing. I also feel that because I was trying to keep pressure to a minimum that the blade may have lifted once or twice because it didn't feel well balanced on the hone. I think the lack of balance may be the surface that I place my stone on (the height feels a bit awkward).
I didn't want to hone too much, so I just tried stropping anyway. To my surprise the blade actually made a more consistent noise on each stroke on the strop. Before (when Tony sharpened the blade) I could get a good (i guess it's good anyway) 'scraping' sound (that's the only way I can describe the sound) in one direction, but not in the other (I'm applying very little pressure when stropping). I've also noticed that the blade seems to stick to the strop a little on the pass away from me (but not on the pass toward me).
After stropping and doing the HHT many times I decided to shave (probably not a good idea). The shave was very smooth and I had little irritation; however, the shave wasn't as close as it had been after Tony had sharpened the blade.
This leads me to the following conclusions:
- The blade probably isn't as sharp as it was
- The blade still has a fairly consistent edge because the shave was smooth (i.e., no catching or dragging)
- I need to balance myself and the blade better during honing
- I'm still unsure about how much pressure to apply to the blade, and where to apply it during honing
- I'm happy with my stropping technique
Can anyone comment on the above? In particular, I'm worried about the balance of the blade on the hone, the pressure I apply, and where to apply it (i.e., using fingers along the spine of the blade etc). :shrug:
Andrew.