First coticule success: half-strokes, circles and a lot of louping
Over two years ago, I bought me an ERN The Crown and Sword Razor and coticule. The razor is still my most beautiful shaving article, but I got rid of the coti after half a year of successive failures. Then, months later, I spied a vintage coticule at a flee market, begging me to take it home, flatten it, try it, fail, and put it away. Until a few weeks ago when I couldn't resist and gave it another try, though with a completely different approach.
I used to try the ubiquitous slurry dilution, finish with water and then meet disappointment. I tried raising a microbevel and met with a smaller disappointment, but still a one. This time, I did what helped me understand my Shapton Glass Stones, and that is look:
I raised a pretty thick slurry (with a Chinese natural hone, as I have no slurry stone and don't want to use my DMT8C) and started with improving the bevel I had set on my 1K Shapton GS. I used medium pressure and half-strokes. Soon enough, I could see with my 7x loupe that the scratches looked different, but were still quite deep.
With a few drops of water and a little less pressure, I made circles until I couldn't see the scratches anymore. TPT confirmed that the edge was improving. The toe fell behind a little, so I gave it extra attention until the whole bevel looked even.
Again, a few drops of water, but keeping the pressure the same, I moved back to half-strokes until there were even scratches again. The bevel looked more polished than at the beginning.
Some water, circles until the even scratches disappeared, some water, half-strokes until even scratches were back, repeat until I was out of slurry.
Then I finished with 50 x-strokes on water, stropped, was a little disappointed by the HHT (I know, I know, but I calibrated mine). So I added a layer of tape, did another 50 x-strokes, had a jaw-dropping HHT and similar shave. I'll keep on trying until I can do without the tape, I know I'm close.
I'd love to hear from other people trying this alternation of circles and half-strokes/x-strokes (whichever holds your fancy, I chose half-strokes). If I reminisce correctly, my previous coticule gave hazy bevels rather than scratchy ones, so I'm wondering if others can get a similar result off theirs.
I think it's basically what Lynn does in some of his movies, only now I understand why. It helped me understand my Shaptons, because for them, the same circle/half-stroke alternation works miracles to see if I removed the scratches of the previous hone.