Thread: Norton 4K/8K

I finally got a chance to use my Norton 4K/8K that I bought back in early August. I had been using a Bester 1200 to set the bevel and then J nats (Aoto, Yaginoshima Asagi and Ozuka Asagi) and then stropping on 1/2 and 1/4 micron CBN pastes on Balsa wood strops. Never really got a comfortable shave with any of the blades I had honed. So I picked up the Norton, made sure it was flat and went to town on a few blades. Did much better than I thought with the 4K/8K combo, edge was bright after the 8K and then went to the Ozuka Asagi and Illinois 827 strop for a clean, smooth looking edge under 30X magnification. Got a pretty decent shave, used one of my heavier smiling SR's to shave 7 days worth of coarse growth and 1 pass knocked it down very well with some light stubble, first SR attempt in a few months. I tried to do a Xtg pass, but got a nice cut from it because I was very tired and shaky (out in the AM to go hunting after 4 hrs sleep, shaved that evening). Gonna go back and try re honing all of my SR's now. I think my J Nats weren't fully flat. Many are fairly hard and take forever to truly flatten out, even using diamond plate 140 grit and other methods. Now I have 11 more razors to hone!

Knowing the stone was flat seemed to help me keep a better view on the edge bevel and what I was doing. My J nats are pretty flat, but not as flat as the Norton and the Norton was a bit easier to flatten. I use the J Nats on my kitchen cutlery and that doesn't need a perfectly flat stone; I though by using the X strokes it may compensate for some slight unevenness, but I learned it didn't work that way!