Thread: Disapointing JNat results (sharp but neither smooth nor clean)

Hello everybody!

Recently, I bought a JNat (Awasedo Shobu Asagi) and honed a couple of razors on it (lots of Solingen's, some Wade & Butcher's) by going thru the whole nagura progression (Botan=>Tenjho=>Merijho=>Koma=>Tomonagura). My Tomonagura is a Nakayama Tomae.
I honed (only edge leading) until I reached a feeling that I interpreted as slurry break down.
After this, I did 70-100 strops on my hanging strop.
In accordance with Keith V. Johnsons thoughts, I only stroped on clean leather (Juchten), but not on Chrox or something similar abrasive stuff.

The level of sharpness of all blades was good, but no mind-blowing results could be observed:
Solid HHT 4, so, no big difference from a regular Naniwa hone with Chrox / Metal Polish here.
But since I don't shave with hanging hair tests, these results were more than OK for my needs.

Sadly, the last three shaves with all three JNat honed razors were quite disapointing, since they were neither smooth nor clean.
In all three cases, the razors gave me quite harsh shaves while shaving with the grain.
Honestly, the shaves were tough jobs followed by unsatisfactory results. When I applied the after shave, my face turned into a towering inferno.
Surprisingly, in all three cases, the sharpness seemed to be almot unchanged after the shaves (still something like HHT 4).
Honestly, I get much better results with Cotis, Thuringians or even Naniwa Super Stones.

To cut a long story short: Any thought's how to fix it? ;-)

Shoubudani Asagi? Check this thread and see if it helps any:

http://straightrazorpalace.com/hones...irst-jnat.html

Start around post 10 to get to the meaty parts.

Originally Posted by Marshal

Shoubudani Asagi?

I guess, that "Shobu" means "Shobudani". I bought exactly this one:

Awasedo Shobu Asagi

Yea, looks like the same stone, so the information contained in that thread should be applicable. I would say first thing to assess is whether it has those black inclusions mentioned, and whether they're toxic or helpful to honing. Maybe hone a test blade up on your Naniwas and try pure water on the Jnat to see what it does?

The little black specks aren't necessarily bad - mine has some that look the same, but it makes a sharp smooth edge, not an uncomfortable one.

That sounds rough and it's even more painful to have spent all that money and still not get a good edge.

I would suggest that (if you haven't already) you go back and read through all of the JNat honing posts to see if you are missing something. Often it's just one slight tweak to your process to get you where you need to be.

I've observed your result several times, it isn't uncommon I guess. After all, it is difficult to judge an edge so small, just by the honing feeling.... well, for me that is. Do you use any magnification? How do you make sure you do a good job at removing previous stria, before moving on to the next stone (nagura)? Botan can be quite rough. Mejiro and Tenjyou can be quite similar. Koma, I won't comment on just yet, but I read they start off quite rough, so you must make sure you really max it out and allow it to really do it's magic (this is just theory)... so there is a lot of factors at play here, which only you can observe, since we don't really know your naturals.

Maybe the easiest thing to try is simply repeating the Tomo nagura for another round. Compare the shaves. Like so, if there is no improvement, you could step back to Mejiro, redo it, then redo Tomo.

The key is to find where you've missed in the progression.

Or maybe, that stone is just not able to deliver.. but this would be impossible to guess by the picture. It looks fine, from what I can see.

Do you live in Germany by the way?

I would experiment with how you are finishing and only use the jnat for finishing instead of progression until you get edge you like. I would test water, diamond plate slurry maybe, different tomo if you have any. I am new to jnat and all I have done so far is test the oozuku with just tomo for finishing and just water. I am liking the results with tomo finish best, so I will be testing the 3 stone nagura (no komo) to tomo later. Good luck getting the edge you want
All I do after honing my razor is 20 laps on leather after honing and then 50-100 before I shave like normal, I don't really use webbing or linen. I am going to be testing CrOx later but would just be using it to touch up razor if I don't want to break stones out (I always want to break stones out though so yea).

This thread probably would be better served in the honing section.

Do you have access to any form of magnification to assess the edge?
How was your tomonagura selected? Do you perceive it to be softer than the base stone?
Is there a reason why you did not finish on water?

Since you mentioned other hones, I first would suggest that you try your normal number of finishing strokes on a Naniwa 12k. I usually do 10-20 at most. See what that does on one of your edges to see if the issue is the finish or earlier in the progression.

If I was you, firstly i would figure out how fast it is, how soon the slurries turn dark.

It may require a lot more work with each nagura ?

Thank's a lot for the helpful input from all of you!!!

I inspected the bevel with a 30x magnifier and figured out that there were dozenz of tiny notches in the bevel .
I don't have any explanation for this observation, but this observation could be itself an explanation for the harsh shave. But I doub't that theese notches are the result of the wrong Tomo or something like this. IMHO, there's something fundamentally wrong.

I compared also the bevels to the bevels of the razors which I honed with the Naniwas.
The differences are quite hughe. The Naniwa bevels look much much keener to me. At the moment, I'm just not convinced that JNats can outperform Naniwas in terms of keeness and smoothness of shaves.

@ Srdjan: Ja, ich komme aus Deutschland.