Thread: Am I missing something !

a lot of people prize the gokumyo (updated name:I believe this is stone you talking about) 20k, sham who is particularly passionate about his stones thinks this is only acceptable finisher when it comes to synthetics, however he does not use pastes. Personally I think you should get something cheaper first and really get your honing up to scratch before spending so much on a stone. AJ on ebay sells all kind of good stones for good prizes like vintage Escher's and Thüringen's for around 45.00-60.00 and as you are in UK the postage is acceptable, you really cant go wrong with those hones. If you want to try something even cheaper try his slate hones especially purple and green ones. read about the on forums people really enjoy them.
When it comes to pastes, if you are using chromium, cerium, tin oxides they are all abrasives which are harder than the steel used in razor, thus they slowly remove steel thus the edge is kind of cross between stone and paste, it also depends how many strokes you do on paste and which paste you are using. Personally I think cheaper natural finisher plus paste will give you as smoth shave as gokumyo 20k, but gokumyo 20k plus pastes will give you even sharper edge. Another problem now is the harshness of the edge and that depends on the razor and of course your skin, the edge you might get will be extremely sharp to sharp for your face. Before buying the stone send it to someone with the guyoko 20k to get it sharpened and decide if you are enjoying the edge if not then try something else, that's the beauty of straight razor some people like shaves of Norton 8k and some need CBN 0.1 micron spray. Hope I actualy make sense and didn't blap for to long
Regrds Rafal