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So now that I have gotten used to honing and have a setup that can get me a real nice edge every time, I have noticed that I have become spoiled by that edge. Partly due to being spoilded, and partly due to the fact that I enjoy honing as soon as the edge loses an iota of that fine edge and after only a couple of pasted strops to maintain it, I break out the coti! Is this common? Is this bad?
I'd say it's pretty impressive that you've done all this since February. :) But other than that, I think it makes perfect sense to choose to have the best edge you can have in order to shave with.
Well I've been straight shaving for almost a year now but, I have only been honing for a few months now. I have had some good teachers though and it has been a pretty quick lesson. I thought it was a good idea to always have the best edge possible too. But I have had a lot of good ideas that others didn't think so. Such as shaving with a straight razor for instance!
Replying to your original post: you need to buy more razors, dull ones.
when refreshing your razors, start on either misty slurry or water, you should not need thick or even milky slurry.. that will be a waste of time, a waste of steel, and making things more difficult than they need to be.
a practice that has made sense to me for a while, and has recently been discussed elsewhere, is a way to do very controlled dillutions. rather then adding a drop of water every once in a while to water down the slurry and avoid having the slurry dry out while slurry slowly gets moved off the hones surface try the following: dip the blade in water every few strokes (how frequently depends on what you are doing) to rinse away a small amount of slurry off the blade, and bring a small amount of water on to the hone.. a good way to go from misty slurry for very slight abrassion to plain water for final polishing. also some people finish on misty slurry and dont bother going all the way to plain water. give it a try..
you dont need to remove much metal to refresh a razor, and /very/ light slurry needn't have a great dulling effect, but can help if your coti is a slow cutting polisher that is slow to sharpen on plain water. if your coti is fast on water then plain water is probably be a better idea.
as long as you arent doing a full bevel reset starting from thick slurry all the way down to water you wont wear out your razor very quickly.
Jehova 316...I can not say anything except I completely agree with you...I really enjoy honing too. In fact, if it wasn't for electric tape, I wouldn't have much left for steel. A problem I've been having is trying to remember when I did to which razor I did it to and what I did. So what I've done is really try and narrow down the number of razors I use to two and sometimes three or four; included in the pack are the following: A Hart; a RW Purist and two Holzhhauers - one a 5/8 the other 6/8. Sometimes I throw in another one here and there, but that's when the trouble begins.