Re-visting the Chinese Hone
A little over a year ago I was asking some questions about the Chinese hone...
In this thread http://straightrazorpalace.com/advan...uestion-s.html
Since then I have learned quite a bit and wanted to share some thoughts...
#1 and this is the biggy, this is a natural stone, it varies and they vary quite a bit I have used 4 of them now and I finally have one that really works exceptionally well...
#2 There are some very hard stones out there that are scratchy, these take forever to get settled in and even then they are not all that great...
#3 There are some very soft stones that produce slurry off of just the razor without touching a slurry stone, much like the lower grades of Coticules these actually cut rather fast, but don't leave a very sharp edge...
#4 The people that love these hones I would think have the ones that are a dull Grey with no blueish tint and have slight black grains in them...
This is the one I have found to really work it leaves a very sharp very smooth edge the feel is like you threw talc on the stone, a very smooth, soft feel, really reminded me of the Charnley Forest that Lynn let me use at the NC meet...
Also it only takes about 30 laps off of a Norton 8k (my testing routine) to finish off the edge...
All in all after 4 stones and a bit of testing I have found that like most Natural products it all comes down to which one is in your hand...