Thread: Jnat finish question

Hi guys,

I've acquired an Ozaki Kiita Koppa but am still trying to figure out how to work with it.

My progression is all shapton glass 1K till 16K and then Tomo Nagura on the Kiita.
But, and here is the but, I can't get a good shaving edge of it yet.
It is very comfortable, but lacks a bit of sharpness.
I'm still learning to hone to start with, but am able to get a pretty good edge from my SG20K after the same shapton progression. So I must be doing something good lol.

Now my acutal question is, when I test shave, and it isn't that good, can one just go back to the Jnat with fresh tomo slurry and try again ? Or should you go lower in grit first? and if so, how low?

Thanks for the input.

All I can think of is try without slurry & use fewer strokes. Assuming you have a shave ready edge at 16k it's easy to lose it with too much subsequent honing. It's even possible your Ozaki is not as fine as your 16k.

Is it a hard stone? Does it self slurry?

It's a hard stone which does not self slurry (lvl 5++)

You may have the same problem I had.

See this thread and DaveW's helpful response:
http://straightrazorpalace.com/hones...acquision.html

Hi, I haven't tried DN slurry yet. I only have aDMT325 which I use for lapping the shaptons. The stone comes from a reputable seller, and the man I acquired it from had honed a razor on it which shaved sublime. So it's me not using it correctly hehe...
It's this stone btw:
735_Ozaki_kiita_koppa

It's going to be challenging to improve on a good 16K edge. Smoother, maybe. Keener, not so much.

Do you have a Tomo nagura stone? If so my suggestion is as follows:

I'm assuming you've already flattened the stone. I would make sure the surface is scratch free. IMO a smoother more polished honing surface with render a more polished and keener edge. And with a stone intended to be used with Nagura there's no point going all out polishing it up like I do the stones that are used without slurry. The moment I scrub the surface with nagura some of the polishing I usually do would be undone, so better to just polish the surface up with the nagura and call it good. So with my Jnat I polished out the scratched up to 2k, then scrubbed the surface with the tomo Nagura that was included with it for a little while and called it good. If you don't have a tomo nagura to try it with I'd float the suggestion of getting one or you could simply take something made of hard tool steel like a chisel and work the surface of the stone to break it in.

I wouldn't take the razor's edge to 16k. It's already been said, but your natural stone is more than likely not this fine. Maybe try moving from something in the 8k to 12k range over to the Jnat. See if you can figure out exactly how fine the stone is by comparing it's stria to your synthetics. That'll give you a better indicator where to stop on the synthetic ladder before moving over to the Jnat and possibly prevent over working the edge. 10-20 laps with water only, see if you've improved your edge. Maybe give it a test shave. Repeat until it stops improving.

Another suggestion I've seen floated, but have yet to try is finishing on a very very fine slurry. Optimal would be from a piece of tomo nagura rather than DN slurry, since I'd rather use a smooth unscuffed surface for finish work. But the gist of it as I gathered would be stop around 8K, work up a light to medium slurry and start doing dilutions. Once you've worked it down to a thin barely-there slurry do your final finishing strokes on that. But the result of this is likely a smooth shaving edge, not so much a keen one. So if you try it, bear that in mind going forward.

In any case, like Kelbro said naturals are more about getting the edge smooth than keen. When I get it right the edge from my coticule is only about as keen as an 8K synthetic. But the shave is smooth as butter, and very comfortable from start to finish. I've yet to mirror the same level of smoothness with synthetics that I get with naturals in general.

Looking at your progression again, I'd suggest trying 3-5 strokes after your 16k on your Jnat completely dry, no water, no slurry. Of course the 16k should be shave ready first. Might sound crazy but it's easier to start with less & graduate upwards.

For me and I say for me, I found out that coming off my 12K and using either a somewhat heavy DN or tomo slurry I was knocking the edge back and I was being told by my Mentor over and over i was using to much slurry and actually dulling the edge, he referred to it as slurry dulling so i now just use a hint of slurry and finish on almost straight water and have been pleased.

I would say experiment with different amounts of slurry and see where it gets you