Thread: Charnley Score?

Originally Posted by Harvitz81

Hi Lynn,

What kind of oil and how many strokes do you do?

Sewing machine oil, knife sharpening oil and I have even used camellia oil.

Typically I try to stick with 10 X strokes on my finishers following the 8K.

Have fun

Originally Posted by Lynn

Sewing machine oil, knife sharpening oil and I have even used camellia oil.

Typically I try to stick with 10 X strokes on my finishers following the 8K.

Have fun

Thanks Lynn. I'm going to try it with water tonight and I also have some honing oil I may play with in the future.

After scrubbing all the oil off though I'm hesitate to expose it to more oil.

I use Singer sewing machine oil on my CF and all that happens is the oil goes a bit black while honing. (it's the bottom one btw, top one is an India oil stone)

The reason I dont use mine with oil is that I like to use slurry on it after an 8K for 30 laps or so, then progress to plain water for another 40-60.

Lynn says to do 10 X strokes, by which I assume he means 20 in total. I have never found a Charnley that 20 strokes couldnt be improved upon and have tried 7 in total now, but they all do have different properties.

They are not fast cutting stones.

Well last night I took a razor that had an excellent escher finish to this suspected CF.

I started with a slurry and did about 20 very light half-strokes on each side and proceeded to dilute 5 times (dilucharn , which BTW is how I found best to use my escher as well before finishing with water (diluesch ).

Finished with about 60-80 or so x-strokes on just water with very light touch.

If the stone was to degrade the edge I figured I gave it plenty of opportunity. The resulting shave was excellent! I didn't notice an increase in sharpness per se, but it was a tad smoother than my escher finish. I finished the shave with some Alt-Innsbruck (same as prior days shave) and noticed less tightening of my skin.

All in all, I think this will be a great finisher for me as I've been trying to find something similar to an escher finish (don't know why as I love that finish), and think this will fit the bill.

Next tests will be coming directly off the coti for comparisons sake.

Hi Joe,

One thing I am aware of from doing similar tests is that there is no 'control sample' for the experiment - ie no constant that can be referred to, so its a bit like trying to compare apples with oranges. The only way you can compensate for that is by a high degree of standardisation.

For instance, how many laps do you normally do on the escher? You are doing 100 in total on the the suspected CF (I'm thinking that your 'half' stroke is a back and forth motion, so I'm calling it a lap), so any variation in how you finish the razor on each stone has to be taken into consideration.

You also started with 'half' strokes - did you do the same with the escher - if you did, did you do the same number? In the absence of a control hone, perhaps a 'blind' subject or two (someone who didn't know what hone the razor had last seen) would do. That would take some of the subjectivity away, as would honing it on the same hone twice in succession and seeing if any differences were noted by the subjects.

Just a thought! A bit impractical I know.

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Hi Joe,

One thing I am aware of from doing similar tests is that there is no 'control sample' for the experiment - ie no constant that can be referred to, so its a bit like trying to compare apples with oranges. The only way you can compensate for that is by a high degree of standardisation.

For instance, how many laps do you normally do on the escher? You are doing 100 in total on the the suspected CF (I'm thinking that your 'half' stroke is a back and forth motion, so I'm calling it a lap), so any variation in how you finish the razor on each stone has to be taken into consideration.

You also started with 'half' strokes - did you do the same with the escher - if you did, did you do the same number? In the absence of a control hone, perhaps a 'blind' subject or two (someone who didn't know what hone the razor had last seen) would do. That would take some of the subjectivity away, as would honing it on the same hone twice in succession and seeing if any differences were noted by the subjects.

Just a thought! A bit impractical I know.

Regards,
Neil

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the suggestions. I know there is no real scientific way to do this. In regards to your questions - I do actually use my escher very similarly with half strokes on slurry then x-strokes on water. For whatever reason I found this way to work best for me and always gives me an edge improvement off a coticule finish.

Yesterday I finished a razor on a coticule and shaved and though I got a good shave, the sharpness wasn't up to what I prefer. I'm going to take this razor to the suspected CF tonight and see if I get an edge improvement.

Basically, I'm very familiar with the edge I get from the coti and if this stone improves that edge then that is all I really care about whether it is a charnley or not.

Ultimately what I would love to do with all my finishers is find a nice 7 day set and finish them all up to a DMT 8K. Save one at that level and then use the next 6 on different finishers (coti, escher, CF, JNat, yellow lake oilstone, chinese 12K - all the finishers I have). That way the razor at the 8K could be my baseline and then I could see how the edges are on the other 6 finishers ruling out the steel as a factor and also ruling out how the razor was finished prior (i.e. going from escher to CF).

Someday this will be my ultimate test, but I need to find a nice seven day set first.

Thanks again Neil!

Joe