Thread: Menu from Morihei

What can I say.. that hone is expensive and ugly.. don’t buy it. Don’t even think about it. You might end up like me…

Yesterday I got some time to check this stone out. I took 3 razors, Wostenholm pipe razor, Roxo by Marsh brothers and Imperial. I used distilled water and koma nagura. I did exactly as old guy advised. Started with 5-6 strokes with koma slurry and then diluted it with water and ended up with pure stone. In about 30-40 strokes razor was absolutely shave ready. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I did more passes on my TM strop than on the stone. I said to myself, wait, see if you can repeat it. Wostenholm, quarter hollow is quite hard razor, however story was exactly the same, maybe a little more passes on stone. Third razor shoved exactly the same performance. I honed 3 razors in less that an hour with stropping, cleaning the stone and making all kind of tests, hanging hair, standing hair and everything I can think of. What it means, that I, with honing skills slightly above average, got results I never dreamed possible!

Hone itself absorb water, and feeling on the stone is kinda “silky”. Interesting, that water doesn’t work as lubricant, I can admit that I needed more “force” to slide razor compare to my shoubudani. Almost no slurry from the stone itself. I remember Alx article “sharp ws shiny” I can confess that I read all of it and did my best to understand it. Edge that I got was sharp and shiny at the same time.

Completely shocked I took my higonokami knife. I am using it to test all my stones. I got perfect and gorgeous kasumi on it and also sharpness I am absolutely happy with. Later that evening, my wife told me that I should stop walking around the house with that stupid face. I believe I was expressing joy, happiness and deepest shock at the same time. Shave this morning proved that razors (I tested 2 of them) was perfect for shaving.

Coming back to Mr Morihei, if you follow his advice, you get perfect result. If you do something on your own, you can get unpredictable results. That doesn’t mean that they will be bad, may be slightly worse that if you follow his advice. That was with my first stone, and with this one.