Thread: Jnat buyers remorse: please help me ;'(

Originally Posted by tlittle

If it helps, with my harder stone it takes quite a long time to make slurry (I didn't really keep track, but I was making circles with my tomonagura for about one song playing in the background). If you go light and just keep at it I'd imagine you'd get something. Better to take longer than scratch up the stone anyways.

no, mine is CRAZY slow. I have a cnat and using the same hardness stone raises the slurry WAY faster than my tomo nagura with jnat. actually after I lapped the tomo nagura and jnat, the nagura glides on the jnat with no friction and no slurry is made. if I press hard then I will scratch the stone.

to avoid scratches you need to lighten up the pressure and chamfer the edges of the tomonagura.
I see you used the nortons to lap the Jnat, how do you lap the nortons? With a notron lapping plate?
I am not sure if the synthetics can effectively lap the Jnat, you can try to lap with sand paper progression all the way to 1.5-2k then botan then tomonagura and see if that will change things.

Originally Posted by gugi

May be start by using the hone to just tweak an edge that is already good to shave. When you figure out how to use it in that regime see about the slurry. It just strikes me that you are doing a lot of things that you're unfamiliar with, so simplifying them into bites that are easier to chew would be my approach.

yes that is a good point: eliminating many variables

but the point is: if I have an edge which is already good, I can't figure out if the jnat made it any better or it was that way from the beginning.
my current dovo razor which I honed with jnat is already "good" to shave. I tried doing super light strokes on the jnat but it did not do anything (I find that super light strokes does magic on synthetic waterstones)

Originally Posted by mainaman

to avoid scratches you need to lighten up the pressure and chamfer the edges of the tomonagura.
I see you used the nortons to lap the Jnat, how do you lap the nortons? With a notron lapping plate?
I am not sure if the synthetics can effectively lap the Jnat, you can try to lap with sand paper progression all the way to 1.5-2k then botan then tomonagura and see if that will change things.

thank you, I lapped the nortons on DMT extra course diamond plate. (the 4k was also lapped with the 1k norton).

before I scratched it in the honing, the jnat was rather shiny and smooth like glass.

Originally Posted by danielghofrani

yes that is a good point: eliminating many variables

but the point is: if I have an edge which is already good, I can't figure out if the jnat made it any better or it was that way from the beginning.
my current dovo razor which I honed with jnat is already "good" to shave. I tried doing super light strokes on the jnat but it did not do anything (I find that super light strokes does magic on synthetic waterstones)

Well, this tells you something. Figure out how to make a difference to the edge after the norton. No slurry, just water. You can vary the number of strokes and the pressure, but the hone should be able to make a difference, unless the edge of that razor cannot be improved any further.
To me it seems that this is what you should be doing for a while. After all you paid $500 for exactly this regime, in the regime with coarser slurries you could achieve the same result with much cheaper hone.

I have never fooled with gradations 3 - 4- 5 of HHT. I just hone the razor, strop it and it passes or I hone some more. That said, a wise man told me that to take full advantage of some higher grit naturals you have to begin with them at an already very high level of sharp. I don't know if that is any help in this case but it might be something to consider. IOW, take a razor that is at a high level and hone on your new J-nat and see if the edge improves or degrades.

Originally Posted by gugi

Well, this tells you something. Figure out how to make a difference to the edge after the norton. No slurry, just water. You can vary the number of strokes and the pressure, but the hone should be able to make a difference, unless the edge of that razor cannot be improved any further.
To me it seems that this is what you should be doing for a while. After all you paid $500 for exactly this regime, in the regime with coarser slurries you could achieve the same result with much cheaper hone.

Thank you very much this helps a lot. I will lap the stone again and try to do strokes with more pressure and see if that does something.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I have never fooled with gradations 3 - 4- 5 of HHT. I just hone the razor, strop it and it passes or I hone some more. That said, a wise man told me that to take full advantage of some higher grit naturals you have to begin with them at an already very high level of sharp. I don't know if that is any help in this case but it might be something to consider. IOW, take a razor that is at a high level and hone on your new J-nat and see if the edge improves or degrades.

Thank you very much this doubles what gugi said, I will finish with light strokes on the norton 8k (leaves it quite sharp) then I will start with jnat with no slurry and see that does something. I have lost hope in the tomo nagura.

Originally Posted by danielghofrani

Thank you very much this doubles what gugi said, I will finish with light strokes on the norton 8k (leaves it quite sharp) then I will start with jnat with no slurry and see that does something. I have lost hope in the tomo nagura.

One thing to be careful about, a very fine Jnat will be very slow to improve an 8k edge. To test how the edge progresses you can do sets of 20 strokes and test shave with no stropping just a few cm on the cheeks. You should feel the difference when the edge is improved.
After you figure out the count, you can add nagura between the 8k and the Jnat to speed up the process, mejiro will work fine. Now you have this one new variable to tune up to get similar result.

Thank you very much mainaman. yes I will do that! should I do light strokes on the jnat?