I have been honing for months and months without getting the results I wanted. I was really getting frustrated with it all.
Until a couple of days ago!
I recently acquired a Thuringian hone and this has made my journey endlessly easier.
The Thuringian makes a fine finisher and that's apparently what I had been missing for the entire time.
I have Coticules, but I cannot yet replicate the edges from the Thuringian on the Cotis.
I usually use a Coti + slurry or BBW + slurry to set and perfect the bevel, depending on how much work the razor needs.
If I use the Coti with slurry I always go to the BBW on slurry afterwards, I dilute the slurry on my BBW to very watery slurry and look for the razor to undercut along the entire edge.
This way my BBW leaves a very nice sharp refined edge, I know people have been able to use a bbw with very light slurry to finish their razors, but I haven't been able to get acceptable shaving results this way, eventhough the edges from the BBW get very good HHT results.
After that I go to a Coticule with plain water, or sometimes light slurry and finish on plain water. This leaves a very good edge, but not yet what I wanted, I have a couple of Cotis and have yet to figure out how to get the most out of them.
Here is where the Thuringian comes in. I could've gone with plain water probably, but I decided to raise a slurry and dilute it to plain water.
After a while on plain water the razor started to stick to the hone like crazy, I almost couldn't drag my razor through the water over the hone anymore. I'm sure this was a sign. I dried the razor, stropped it up and shaved with it; and I was amazed.
I have been working on two razors and have test shaved them maybe 10 times and it was never satisfactory, always got some pull and irritation. But now I got none of that.
I have only finished two razors this way, a Boker and a Henckels, they both shave smooth and sharp now, no pulling whatsoever, which really astounded me, I almost couldn't believe it. The irritation is non-existent, very forgiving.
I have also adjusted my stropping method turning the razor using the fingers and not the hand, I feel this has also had a good impact on it all.
All in all, this has made me very happy!
Cheers!
Btw, I have ruined more than a couple of razors in my journey, creating excessive hone wear, using too much pressure, etc. etc. and my budget practice strop is a bit cut up, oops!