Thread: Touch ups

Would 0.5 micron lapping film be to fine for SR touch ups between honings?

Originally Posted by Cattleman02

Would 0.5 micron lapping film be to fine for SR touch ups between honings?

I don't like a .5µ or .3µ film edge. Sharp, but just not comfortable to me. But if you follow up with BACKED AND LAPPED balsa treated LIGHTLY with .25µ diamond paste, rubbed in good, and then .1µ on a different balsa, and do it correctly with barely brushing contact, you will be amazed at how sharp AND smooth your edge can be. Honestly, lapping film is great down to 1µ if you get the right stuff, but finer grit film just isn't pleasing, to most of us. At that grit stage TBH you are better with balsa and CrOx, a tiny bit, rubbed in really good, and wiped down with an old tshirt to completely remove CrOx from the surface. The idea is to have the abrasive buried in the grain so the scratch pattern is extremely shallow. Not half as good as the suggested diamond paste regimen but way better IMHO than CrOx on leather, cardboard, or linen, and far better than sub micron lapping film. But try it for yourself. Its subjective and all about perception. Your face, your razor.

Another nice way to do a touchup is if you have a 12k Naniwa, run it with shave lather on the stone and start with light pressure, and gradually lighten it so it ends up feeling like you are not even touching the stone, just skimming along in the lather. It is the gradual lightening of pressure, carried out until it is literally zero, that does the trick. When you nail it, very nice edge.

All of these methods require a sharp (12k or 1µ or so, skillfully used) to really achieve anything to write home about.

Once you have an edge truly dialed in to the diamond on balsa, you can maintain indefinitely, (I do, I have razors that have not seen a stone or a piece of film in 10 years) with ONLY the .1µ balsa. But it will do absolutely nothing for you if you did not at some point follow the full progression.

As proof that it works, here is a very ordinary, in fact subordinary, razor shaving a whole bunch of accumulated face fur.