Thread: Norton 8K

@ Euclid440: I haven't been honing very long, but I'm patiant and persistant (If I wasn't my incredibly understanding wife would never have married me) and I've made good progress. I have honed to "shavable" at least 5 razors. I define "shavable" as being able to shave comfortably, but with some skipping on the tougher areas (chin). Basically the reason I started this thread was that the shave tests I was doing indicated that coming off the 8K gave me the best shave of the bunch. I also used a DE blade AND a professionally honed blade as a baseline for my tests. I tried the slurry dilution with the Coti and although it didn't produce the results I know the stone is capable of I LOVED the art of it. I really like the natural stones for some reason, with all their variablity and temperamental nature there is just something about them that I am attracted to. I find honing so relaxing, everything just drops away and I'm not thinking about the thousand of other things going on at work/life/home etc. At any rate I'm glad that I'm on the honing road and know that between practice and the advice of you more experienced users I'll all good. I have ordered a 40X loupe and I'm hoping that can shed some light on the bevel that I can't get with my little magnifying glass. I'm pretty confident that my inexperience is the biggest issue and started this thread to get an idea of how others are using the natural finishers (i.e. pressure, slurry, not slurry etc). I'm going to take another shot at the coti soon. Thanks for the 1K cut above the skin comment, I haven't tried that test at the 1K level and will get it there before moving on.

What exactly do you do to lapp and prep a C12K? The two that I have are both very smooth, but I'd like to know and maybe I'll run them through your process before going abck to them.

Thanks again for your help.

Synthetic are much easier and more predictable. You may consider crox on a hanging linen strop or on balsa. Naturals are fickle til you figure them out. And each one is different. Or get a naniwa 12k. Thats 10-15 laps max and you are done. Depending on how good your 8k edge is though. You dont want to do more than that anyway as you may get microchips on a hard stone after to many laps.

Some very good advice here. I'll be following this thread with interest.