Thread: BBW as a one-hone?

Originally Posted by Deckard

..Well guy's,

I hate to be the one descanter among us, but I have had some blindingly keen edges from my cotis [...] these are the kindest edges on my skin...

Respect
Joe

Exactly - your skin. That's the only criterion that counts really, all the rest is just opinion, and there are as many of those as there are people. Same thing goes for skin, I suppose...

Regards,
Neil

PS: You aren't the only 'descanter' either, not by a long chalk...

All this talk of descanters. Now I'm craving whisky.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

All this talk of descanters. Now I'm craving whisky.

Are you sure you have not had a few already, Oz....?

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Are you sure you have not had a few already, Oz....?

No whisky in the house atm Neil but Gordons was on special yesterday so tee many martoonies are a possibility .

Originally Posted by onimaru55

No whisky in the house atm Neil but Gordons was on special yesterday so tee many martoonies are a possibility .

Just curious where do they make your Gordon's the bottle I bought saids Product of Canada.
It makes sense to make it in Canada for the Us market.

Ok well I have been reading this thread more and well kinda decided to just not respond till now. I have been doing experiments and seeing what differences are between stones and seeing what I can do to push the stone to its limits.

Well yesterday, I shaved with my test razor after finishing on a BBW. Well it was a decent shave. BBS in most places. I was in a rush so I didn't really pay to much attention to the trouble spots otherwise it would have been completely BBS. I honed my test razor maybe a month ago (i had to put this test on the back burner as I had a couple of other more important razor projects pop up), but I wrote down notes.

The particular stone I used was a vintage natural combo coti. Now as a disclaimer I didn't obviously have this thread in mind and so, no, I did not use the BBW only. I used a 1k diamond for the bevel set then slurry on a coti diluted to water. I did this because I wanted to take an edge that I knew would be shave ready and then take it to a BBW. I raised slurry on the BBW and again did the same dilution to water. Once I was on water I did 100 laps I did another 50 on oil. Not because thats what it took but because I wanted to make sure everything about the edge was from the BBW and I wanted to squeeze out every bit of smoothness from the stone. Remember I wasn't testing to see if I could shave off the stone I wanted to test what an edge felt like from a particular stone. I probably could have shaved off of it after 50 laps on water not counting the slurry laps. I don't count those I just go off of feel but if I had to guess it would be maybe a total of 200 laps (50 slurry and then 100 water and 50 oil oh and its a 3x2 stone). Any way it didn't take long but mind you this is not going from bevel set it is going from an edge that was done by a finer stone to the bbw. So I was going backward not forward, which undoubtedly would take longer.

Anyways on to the details of the shave. I stropped on linen (50) and leather (100), no pastes. I did my normal prep and used my normal soap that I use for testing. I shaved and on the WTG it was shaving fine but not what I prefer or can get out of my coti or arks or c12k. The only stone that did not beat the BBW that is in my possession and have tested was the Dragons Tongue. I didn't even want to finish shaving off of the Dragons Tongue.

Anyways the shave was very close and decently smooth (as in comfort) and all in all I would say it is acceptable but not to me especially when I could have done half of the work with just a coti. Oh and if money is the only thing preventing you from getting a good stone. The coti combo that I used to do this test was 5 bucks so I think you can afford that.

Originally Posted by onimaru55

No whisky in the house atm Neil but Gordons was on special yesterday so tee many martoonies are a possibility .

Ver nishe, Ossh:



Hic!
Neil

I got a 8x3 natural from a forum member who liked 'scary sharp' edges and didn't find the coticule/bbw provided such. I was early into my honing journey and found this coticule to my liking. Flash back to the 1980s when I bought 3 natural coticules from 3 individual barbers who'd been cutting hair, shaving customers, and honing razors for 50 years on average. All three told me the bbw side was only to support the fragile yellow side, and not for honing.

Old Rock and Deep Rock brand would sell their stones with a label glued onto the bbw. Bart posted that it was only in recent years that the bbw was found to be a viable razor hone, and posted photos of BBW used as paving stones, fences on the countryside, and even as stone facing on houses. One of a huge table top of bbw. Back to my 8x3, long before coticule.be existed, when Bart was still around SRP, I experimented with a sort of pyramid with my 8x3.

I would set the bevel on a 1k norton and then go to the bbw followed by the yellow. Seemed to work well. As I gained experience I began to realize that the bbw stage was not worth the effort. This is not to say that it didn't produce results, it did 'something'. But the energy expended was not worth the time when just staying on the coticule would be superior. BTW, I've got a slue of coticules, and have had quite a few more than the 6 I have now. I like them. I'd like to like the BBW, but IME it adds nothing to the arsenal.

If all a guy had was a BBW I guess he could get along. OTOH, he could do a lot better with a yellow coticule or many other alternatives. That is my hands on experience, obviously YMMV.