Thread: Question about honing with natural stones

Hi guys, new to the forum, have a few questions about honing using natural stones. I already had soft, hard, and surgical black Arkansas stones that I use knife honing. I picked up a translucent stone to complete my set a few weeks ago after I got a razor for Christmas. The razor in question is the infamous gold dollar. I have since picked up a decent razor for shaving, but am practicing honing with the gold dollar. I also have a pocket microscope, but I don't have a jig set up, so no pictures yet.

After reading about the gold dollar on here and its questionable quality, also seeing the magnified picture of the edge on it out of the box, I decided to reset the bevel and take it through the stones to clean it up.

I set the bevel on the soft Arkansas, did 20-30 x-strokes (both sides) on the hard Arkansas using only the weight of the razor, then went to the surgical black to finish. It seemed no matter how many strokes I did, I couldn't get out the marks from the hard Arkansas. After multiple times on the black stone, I decided to try some extra pressure. I know that goes against advice, but I figured its a gold dollar, and if it messed it up, I could go back to square one and get back to where I was without much work. I did two medium-hard pressure strokes and looked at the edge. It looked like either the edge had folded over, or it hadn't quite contacted the entire edge after two strokes. Figuring I was already started, I decided to finish and completed 10 firm pressure strokes on both sides with the black stone. When I looked at the edge, I was surprised to find it was polished well, the marks from the hard stone were gone, and the edge looked better than I had managed previously. I completed honing with 10 light x-strokes on each side on the black stone, and 10 light x-strokes on the translucent. Its the best edge I have achieved so far, and I have had no issues shaving with edges I have achieved previously.

Is it normal for natural stones to need more pressure on the finishing stones? I'm wondering if I got lucky or if it is a technique I can utilize in the future.