Thread: Inexpensive/creative honing?

Small update - touched up the GCW tonight. Caved and put my new mini coticule to work and used slurry to reset the bevel. Nno real tugging. Close, clean, comfortable. The shave wasn't quite satisfying though. Honestly probably more of a technique issue than the hone/method. I haven't used a blade with a smile in a long time so until my hands get used to it again any shave with that razor will probably just feel off.

I also stropped up the Dovo and had it ready as a back up in case plan A failed. I did a test strip with it though, this time around it was much more mellow and comfortable to shave with. Maybe with a little luck the same will be said for the GCW razor in the not too distant future.

I currently own a king 1000, Norton 4K/8k and Chinese 12k. I'm interested in upgrading. Would you recommend a better 1k or a better finishing stone? I'm interested in the nainiwa 12 k stone, although I'm not that impressed with the king.

Definitely the Naniwa 12k, you will likely not see any improvement in performance with any other 1k, the feel maybe.

But the 12k Naniwa will put a smoking edge off a properly set up 8k stone.

The Norton 4/8k are very hard to beat.

Would using a chinese 12k between the Norton 8k and naniwa 12k be beneficial?

Nope, the Chinese stones are of unknown grit and at best are hit and miss.

From 8k you do not need anything between the 12k. The 12k is a polishing stone that may add the slightest bid of keenness.

A Naniwa,12k edge is like a good 8k edge, with a lot of good Chrome Oxide stropping. It will polish the heck out of an 8k edge.

Originally Posted by Aaron27

I currently own a king 1000, Norton 4K/8k and Chinese 12k. I'm interested in upgrading. Would you recommend a better 1k or a better finishing stone? I'm interested in the nainiwa 12 k stone, although I'm not that impressed with the king.

I was not thrilled with the King 1k, but it works fine. Unless you are planning on doing a lot of honing, I would not bother swapping out the King. It gets the job done.

Now, the important question is, how are your shaves off of the 8k? Unless you are able to make optimal use of your lower grit hones, a different finisher will be useless for you. You must be able to get a great shave off of your 8k before you will get any benefit from a higher grit hone.

There are a few issues with the Chinese hone. First, it is NOT 12k. As a natural rock, a grit designation is useless. Also, as a natural rock, the performance of mine is no indication of the performance of yours or anyone else's. Their performance varies. That means some work well and some don't. The majority of them are quite slow. I would guess that the majority of them can improve the edge off of a Norton 8k.

In direct answer to you question, I would say that unless you are planning on honing a lot of razors (say, more than 50), you would be better off keeping you King 1k and get the Naniwa Specialty 12k. That hone will improve an 8k edge and is a great option for ongoing maintenance of your razors.

Originally Posted by Aaron27

Would using a chinese 12k between the Norton 8k and naniwa 12k be beneficial?

No. The jump between 8k and 12k needs nothing between them. The Naniwa 12k is a fast hone that will finish off an 8k edge in 10-15 strokes, so any intermediate hone is unnecessary.

In addition, the Chinese hone, being of mystery grit equivalence, may not actually belong in that slot. Yours might better fit before the 8k or after the 12k. Only you can determine that with experimentation and magnification. If you want to keep it simple, and if you get the Specialty 12k, then make the Chinese hone a paperweight.

As Utopian points out, you do not need anything between the Norton 8K and a Naniwa 12K.

As for your choice between getting a 1K or a 12K, I'd go with the 12K hands down and live with the 1K King. Your 1K is going to be your least used hone, and only used when repairing the edge on a razor. Your 12K will be touching up every razor you use. I have an 800 and 1K King hones, a 1K Naniwa Professional and a couple of 1.2K diamond plates. My preference amongst all of them is my Naniwa Professional, but it's not often used unless I'm restoring an old razor or I $#_@y7$#(@ dropped a razor in the sink or on the floor! That does not happen very often, but it has happened twice, and both times I had to spend a fair amount of time on the 1K to get all the dings out. If I didn't have the Naniwa 1K, I'd be using the King (and the amount of foul language while honing would be about the same).

As for finishers.... uhh... where do I start?!?!?! Naniwa 12K, Shapton 16K and about 6 or so Naturals.... I only need one, but hey... a guy has to have a hobby, no? In the past, I was quite happy with my Shapton 16K and a Coticule... with the latter making things a little smoother, now and again. Then I started to spend money..... I probably haven't improved my edges much, but my rock collections has a lot more variety now.

So, the absolute bottom line... get what you think you want.... It's going to haunt you until you get it anyway. I've tried to reason things out before, but every time I bought what my mind said I should get, I still ended up buying what my heart wanted shortly afterwards, and after spending all that money, my edges were still about the same.... some slightly smoother or sharper than others, but not really the big improvement I thought I was going to get.

So the Naniwa 12K SS is a fine hone, you will love it and with a bit of care and attention, you'll learn to get excellent edges from it.

Regards

Christian

Originally Posted by Utopian

No. The jump between 8k and 12k needs nothing between them. The Naniwa 12k is a fast hone that will finish off an 8k edge in 10-15 strokes, so any intermediate hone is unnecessary.

In addition, the Chinese hone, being of mystery grit equivalence, may not actually belong in that slot. Yours might better fit before the 8k or after the 12k. Only you can determine that with experimentation and magnification. If you want to keep it simple, and if you get the Specialty 12k, then make the Chinese hone a paperweight.

If you have any natural stone from Belgium or Japan that you are using as a paperweight feel free to send them to me.

Sorry, none of mine are paperweights, but I do have several loaners floating around. I suppose it was a little harsh to call it a paperweight. It was only within the context of being considered between the 8k and 12k.