Originally Posted by
DaveW
Is your razor stainless or carbon steel? if it's carbon steel, I would probably get the zulu instead. You can shave right off of the good naturals with great keenness and no irritation (jnats, eschers and probably the zulu (i also ordered one)), but from what I can tell so far, stainless will prefer the finest synthetics as a matter of practice, with the chromium oxide as the last step.
I have the shapton 15k, and I just don't like it that much for razors. It is a fantastic tool hone, but it seems like it does odd things with my razors sometimes. I'd go the naniwa 12k or sigma power 13k if I were trying to top out on synthetics but also not breaking the bank.
That's not to say you can't finish a stainless steel razor with a natural stone, you can, but the composition of the carbon steels provide fewer carbides (near zero) that are harder than the abrasive. Presumably the stainless has a lot of chromium carbides, even if they are made smaller and more uniform by cryogenic treatment.
All that said, if you avoid heavily pasted strops and don't alter the geometry, it probably doesn't matter too much what you do, because once your razor is in shape, you'll not have to remove much metal to keep it there.