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

yes, the sandblasted finish is exactly what I was about to say but the word did not come to me. I was looking for the "mirror" finish too but I don't have that yet, shiny, but not mirror.

I have an 8/8 dovo which came with a mirror micro bevel and it is my best shaver.

Well, just try to smooth out the top of the hone and fiddle with how it finishes.
I think that using the mikawa naguras will help smooth out the top, especially the mejiro.
So if you have junk razor that you can afford to have it get worn down, honing with the slurry will give you the ultra smooth top you probably are expecting.

After a number of years with quite a few different jnats I gurantee that the slurry will polish the face of the hone as well as the edge of the razor.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by ZethLent

Well, just try to smooth out the top of the hone and fiddle with how it finishes.
I think that using the mikawa naguras will help smooth out the top, especially the mejiro.
So if you have junk razor that you can afford to have it get worn down, honing with the slurry will give you the ultra smooth top you probably are expecting.

After a number of years with quite a few different jnats I gurantee that the slurry will polish the face of the hone as well as the edge of the razor.

Good luck.

Thanks,
I am a little confused so you mean I can do the follwing" Norton 1k, Norton 4k, then raise mejiro slurry and do circles for a long time?

Thanks

Originally Posted by danielghofrani

Thanks,
I am a little confused so you mean I can do the follwing" Norton 1k, Norton 4k, then raise mejiro slurry and do circles for a long time?

Thanks

Sure why not... the mejiro is an abrassive too. And the slurry will break down like any other jnat to a finer and finer grit the longer you hone with its slurry.

In my experience, I have polished the hone top with an extrememly worn 1200 DMT and then just honed a razor on it. No#4000, and no #8000. Just the mikawa naguras. Mind you I have koma naguras to get a higher level but that is only from the start. If an abrassive slurry (say from the mejiro) is going to break down further and further the longer you hone with it, the initial slurry from a mejiro will at some point be the same as what a koma starts at.

Like I said earlier, fiddle with different ways of using it, and learn what it does to your razor when you do something specific with it.

Best of luck.

One other thing. don't hone when you are tired and have the potential to get frustrated.
I find that I like to hone when it is dark out (i.e. evenings) and if I come home tired from work, it won't be a good night to hone. But if I am still wide awake later inthe evening, the success rate for a shave ready razor is much higher. This is especially true with jnats and ultra hard ones that can take even more time.

I would also like to mention that I have honed many razors up to #5000 (Naniwa Chosera), and then worked up a slurry on my finisher and honed until it was shave ready.

It takes time, maybe as much a 20 minutes of re-hydrating the slurry several times, but off of your #8000 you sould be plenty keen to get the full benefits of the jnat.

I hone up to #10000 now (Suehiro Gokumyo) and then on my jnat finisher, which today is an Ozuku Suita (without any su). And this finisher is soft and I never wash the slurry off of it. I just let it ride from razor to razor and I only need about 200 passes on it to have an ultra fine edge.

So you can see how different each hone is and then need to learn the personality of what it has to offer.

I found the edge from the jnat is far superior if you do a full honing on it. I use only a tomo nagura which is much softer than my base stone.

I don't know what level of hardness it is but its pretty bloomin hard.
Something which might help you with making slurry is using alot less water.
Remember to try and refresh your slurry every so often when you dilute and it'll keep sharpening the edge.
to polish the surface after I lap with the DMT 325 I grab my tomonagura and raise a thick slurry, then wash off
that'll get it smooth enough and you should have a very obvious mirror finish
always do light strokes, when you feel heavy suction your either using too much pressure or your slurry has broken down to the point that its polishing.
Only strop about 5 laps on leather to clean the edge for testing after honing, jnat edges can be shaved with straight from the stone and are usually alot sharper before stropping.
And always, always use light pressure doesn't need to be super light, but enough to keep the edge on the hone, IME my stone wants the slurry to do the work.

I can't really advise on using multiple slurry stones, I just use the one tomonagura and raise a thick slurry and dilute and refresh from there

as always this is my stone and yours may differ from the above but I find them pretty easy to hone on and get a great edge.

good luck
alex

Originally Posted by danielghofrani

Thanks,
I am a little confused so you mean I can do the follwing" Norton 1k, Norton 4k, then raise mejiro slurry and do circles for a long time?

Thanks

Hello Daniel
To begin with a Japanese Natural will not polish a blade as bright and shiny and flat as a Shapton 30k or the .25 or .50 micron films, but this is not the point of using Jnaturals. It comes down and you read this over and over again by Jnat users, the comfortable shave. It is all about the character of the edge and the quality of the shave. With some skill you can, for bragging rights, pull a HHT-4 or 5 off a Jnat and this is always a good sign, but you will mostly likely shave for the next few years I hope off your Jnat without reaching the sheer sharpness of the pastes and sprays.

The amazing grit and cutting power of the synthetics allow you to end up with a perfectly flat bevel, the Jnats provide a slighly convex bevel to some degree, and this convex, curved and slighly rounded shape of the two opposing bevels are what provides the extra comfort. Where the bevels meet and converge is the creation of cutting edge and this needs to be well formed and sharp, but the bevels are like the suspension of the razor, rigid/flat makes for a fast but hard ride, soft/curved creates a smooth comfortable ride. The edge itself does the cutting and already you have found that even at 8k you can shave, but at the granular levels of the steel molocules there are limits, and an edge that is performing well at the 8-10 or 15,000 grit level is not that much different than that of the 30k, they are all cutting hair. The attraction of the Jnats is that the natrual edge is tuned it tends to cut hair but leaves the skin unaffected.

Here is a video of mine where I took a blade off my 5K Suehiro directly to my Jnat, raised a diamond nagura slurry and ended up with a shave ready blade in less than 6 minutes, the blade also passed a HHT-3 level.

Honing a razor on a Nakayama - YouTube