Thread: Natural finisher from Montenegro

As promised in the Cretan hone thread, I'm gonna do a short writeup about stones from my region of the world, the Balkans.

The stone I own and have well tested comes from Montenegro, a country high in the mountains with a little strip of Adriatic coast. I was very surprised when I first tried this stone, I must admit I didn't believe anything in razor grade existed around here. I would be interested to know if any of the senior members here have encoutered these stones... meanwhile, here's my take on it.

The stone is fairly hard, although my stonecutter calls it "soft". It's no wonder, since he cuts granite rock for a living. In our terms, it's very hard. It doesn't self-slurry at all, to the naked eye at least. Working a slurry stone on it (tomo) takes a few minutes to get a thick, rich slurry. When honed on tomo slurry, it cuts in the medium range..of course, it's hard to rate the grit, but my guess would be around 6K. Other users of the same stone normally concur to this assumption.

Diluting the slurry works quite well and as we do, the stone cuts slower and finer. Finished on diluted slurry, the edge gets up to aggressive shave-ready, probably between 8 and 10K.

Honing on water, the feedback is similar to honing on a hard jnat (I have no other point of reference). This does depend on the finish of the surface - I like to sand this stone to 800-1000 grit, using either a DMT, or wet&dry paper. The edge gets up to solid 10K on water.

The stone further improves the edge on running water. This is something I recently discovered (hey I'm constantly learning). Very light strokes, the surface will clog slowly and similarly to other more popular stones, the razor will start sticking to it, skipping, screeching... 😉 That's one of the methods that worked well for me. Others have been successful skiping the running water part. Just goes to prove that shave-readiness is a relative term and has a different meaning for everyone.

I like my razors very sharp. When I had my first go at honing on this (same) stone, I wasn't exactly happy with the results. I mean, I was amazed that I managed to get the razor to shave. I set the bevel on Nani SS1K and then used tsushima nagura and tomo nagura, finished on water and figured I had maxed it out. However, I just had to switch to a jnat to push the edge further.

It's been at least 3 months since and I have managed to master the stone, which now gives me an edge in the range of HHT4-5. I may have written somewhere that my HHT is totally messed up. I have short hair, so use dyed, thin hair of the Mrs. I wet it, then wipe off with my finger and test. It's a hit and miss due to this, but the ultimate test (shave) is flawless... again, subjective.

Pictures coming later, when I get to my computer. Cheers!