Thread: One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind, well I got a shave of a razor I hon

I HAVE DONE IT!!!!!!!!!!!
I bought a Coticule 30mmX125mm, not big but what I could afford.(Sorry Steve, I know you recomended a 12k Chinese, but I fell in love with a coticule after watching LXEmergency's video.)
I lapped it (a bit)
Put some water on it, rubbed it with supplied slurry stone, plonked a dull but otherwise OK Kropp on top and did lots of X pattern laps on it, heel first. I kept going till the hone went dry and then a bit, stopped, stropped,tested, did it all twice more.
I then ran upstairs, did a hasty shave prep and actually shaved with the razor and the shave was fine.
The razor was NOT as keen as the shave ready razors I got off Steve Invisible (blueprinciple), but the razor did not "pull" when I used it and cut hair!
l know this is a small step and I doubt I could do much more than refresh an edge at the moment,but I am so proud of myself.
I won't be offering my services for many years yet though
I would like to thank Steve and various other people for their advise and encouragement, also the people who run this site

Congrats!

You say you lapped it a bit. Did you confirm it to be flat by removing gridlines? You are clearly happy with your coticule (which is big enough) already, but you will be much happier with it if it is completely flat.

Welcome to the coticule clan!

Cheers Utopian, There are two areas that are a little lower than the rest, in two corners but I looked to see where the blade would be going and it worked out fine. I will remove even more of my lovely stone soon and make it all comlpletely flat.
BUT IT DOES WORK REALLY WELL

Good decision on the stone and good job with your fist blade

You can do much more than just refresh the edge. The coticule will put a very nice polish on a bevel that is set properly, just do like 30 to 50 more passes with a little water to lubricate things and a very delicate touch (no more pressure than is necessary to move the razor down the length of the stone). That should give you at least some improvement if you want to give it a shot.

And congrats!

Originally Posted by littlesilverbladefromwale

Cheers Utopian, There are two areas that are a little lower than the rest, in two corners but I looked to see where the blade would be going and it worked out fine. I will remove even more of my lovely stone soon and make it all comlpletely flat.
BUT IT DOES WORK REALLY WELL

Actually no, DON'T DO IT!!!!

If you just have two low corners left and the honing region does not extend to those corners, don't lap it further. If you do, you will simply be removing perfectly good stone. This will slightly diminish the potential for it to look perfect, but there is no point in wasting the life of the hone making it completely flat. Consider if those two low spots represent 5% of the area of the hone, then you have to be sacrificing 95% of the surface to get down to the level of that remaining 5%. As long as your honing region is sufficient, just keep honing with it and occasionally lapping it to maintain it and in 10 or 20 years you will have a perfectly flat stone!