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Not so good. It shaves, but against the grain there are several areas I did not finish because clearly I was going scrape off a lot of skin. Even in the easy areas, I still have some roughness.
Does it ever get so sharp that the razor will glide off the hair on the across the grain pass? I've gotten some very nice shaves off other stones, but none yet without some degree of 'scrapey scrapey' feeling on chin/moustache.
What was the edge like before the Translucent?
The Translucent is a very hard finish stone and the finish is very dependent on the quality of the edge. It is also very dependent on the condition of the stone face.
Stone face prep makes all the difference. Lots of hard flat steel with lots of pressure until it is glass smooth.
Lots of laps are required depending on the edge quality, of at least 12K, 100 to 300 laps are not uncommon, leaving a hazy, kasumi finished bevel.
Try some Smith Honing Solution with water, 2-3 drops on a wet stone.
Lastly as with all natural stones, all are different and results will vary, drastically at times.
A good Ark edge is keen, crisp yet comfortable off the stone or stropped on leather. Some Chrome Oxide will smooth it out a bit more.
The razor was shaving before I went to the arky. I'm the in the process of testing several stones--this stone degraded the edge from where it was.
Is the stone an old stone or has it been prepped for razor use?
What does the razor’s edge look like under magnification?
You have to determine if the problem is with the razor or with the stone.
Often the finish stone gets the blame, when in fact it is the edge that is damaged, usually from stropping, common with novice straight user or chipped. It only takes one errant stroke to dull an edge.
If the bevel is no longer set, it is a job for more than a finisher especially an Ark.
It could also be your Natural Stone is not a finisher, or most likely not properly prepared for razor finishing.
The first place to look is at your razor’s edge with magnification.
Post a photo of the stone and the razor there may be more going on that can be spotted from a photo, but hard to say without narrowing down the problem.
Euclid, you're right, I need to be rigorous about examining the edge after every sharpening. What magnification would you suggest?
Last night I rehoned it on a suita stone. It shaved nicely. When you talk about 'stone' prep, it makes me smile. My son for a while has been flattening my shapton stones. I have him do it pretty often, so it's a trivial "rub rub". I told him I'd pay him $25 a pop to lap those 4 very large Arkansas stones I have (12" x 3"). His response was "NO WAY!! Easy Money!"
Two hours into the first one, his attitude has changed....a lot, about the "easy money!" I'm evil! ;);)
He'll get to that translucent stone last (using diamond plate). We'll see if that makes a difference.
You might not have tools, but the best thing for me to wear the surface of an arkansas stone in is to sharpen chisels on it. Whatever's being sharpened needs to be 100% hardened steel and have some flat areas to it, which essentially will dull the surface of an arkansas stone without pulling the abrasive loose from the stone (which would be a problem both because it would be floating abrasive as well as exposing fresh abrasive).
I've never been really impressed with arkansas stones as finishers on tools until they are settled in. I have a pike lilywhite washita now that is cutting much finer than a new norton translucent will out of the box. If I were to agitate the surface of the washita, it would literally go all the way back to being coarser than a 1000 grit waterstone (though the way it cuts makes it more suitable for shaving).
At any rate, diamond hones leave ditches in the surface of an ark stone, and my favorite thing to do with them other than tools is to rub two similar ark stones together. a translucent will never allow a coarser natural arkansas stone to embed its particles in the translucent surface and a simple wipe with some oil will remove any loose swarf. There will still be some time between then and the point that you'd consider one a good razor finisher, but any state other than "cutting very slowly" for a trans ark is a transient state.
The only other thing to consider with the arks is what you're using as a razor. By FAR, the best thing to use with them is old razors that are made from the plainest finest crucible steel, because any chromium, tungsten, vanadium carbides of any type will be much harder than the arks abrasive.