My coticule arrived Thursday and I've been playing around with it on three different razors. The seller said it's a slower coticule, so it took me awhile to get an edge, but I kept trying and now my razors can shave my arm very easily.

The problem is that I can't get much smoother than that. I tried shaving with one and it wasn't happening. It just wasn't sharp enough.

I'm not terribly impatient and am not demanding that I get a great edge a couple of days after receiving my first hone, but I want to know what I should be practicing. Here are my biggest issues:

I think I'm going to water only too soon. The edge needs to be sharp enough to pass a HHT before I go to pure water on the stone, right? My razors are not doing so hot on the HHT right now.

If my stone is a slower coticule, I probably need to work longer during each dilution phase of the dilucot method, right?

Once my edge can cut arm hair, should I use any pressure at all from there out?

After the bevel is set, should I still do half strokes, or should I alternate sides between each stroke.

Should I ever wipe off the stone and create a new slurry using dilucot? The videos say no, but not sure if that applies to slow cutters.

Thanks for the advice. My wife thinks I'm crazy for spending so much time running a blade against a stone.