Quote Originally Posted by Gammaray View Post
Some of the guys on this forum are conducting a shave ready experiment with the Norton 4/8k followed by plain stropping. What they are discovering so far is that this can be a great shaver finished with just the 8k. I also have a Naniwa 12k but I think you are better off with pastes and sprays beyond this level either with strops or balsa. You can buy plenty of diamond pastes, CrO, balsa and multiple strops for the cost of one stone above the 12k range and the grit size can go much lower than 30k with better edge coverage than a solid stone. Good luck.
I would agree with this. I have spent thousands of dollars on stones, but after trying the 30k glasstone that someone else had, I figured I'd rather spend money on leather, powders, pastes or natural stones if I want that level of fineness.

The SP 13K is the finest stone I have, and it's nice to have that stuff, but I have gotten a nice shave right off of an 8x2 translucent arkansas stone that cost $35 from the sierra trading post. I didn't even play with it and thicken the oil. It wasn't as sharp as my high $$ stones, but it was sharp enough and it was comfortable, and with a thicker oil (i used WD 40), i could've easily gotten it to pretend to be finer than I used it on shaving.

I'm pretty sure that all of the superfine doddling that everyone does (and I'm included in that from time to time) is necessary for satisfaction of curiosity, but not remotely necessary for a nice comfortable daily shave from a straight razor, or even quick indefinite maintenance (which a plain old cheap arkansas stone is plenty capable of, as are lots of other inexpensive methods).

many ways to skin the cat, anyone not wanting to spend money can easily work around spending lots of it on stones and maintenance.

There's 8-9 ounce vegetable tanned cowhide on ebay quite often for $12 a square foot, and horse butt for that often, too. Gobs of 0.5 micron chromium oxide powder is about $12 or something.

Pushing the envelope with high cost stuff (which I have done from time to time), I think, is for the satisfaction of the shaver, but not necessarily the shave, if you know what I mean.