Thread: Question for DMT users

Regarding shaving armhair at the DMT 1200 grit level:
if you get a great edge in the end, I wouldn't bother. I personally never got great results, if I wasn't already at the "shave hairs"-level at that stage, but if your mileage varies, I wouldn't worry too much. This isn't about shaving arms hair. In the end, It's about shaving your beard.
But, in case you should decide to go back to the DMT after all (which wouldn't surprise me), it really does matter for my results how much pressure I apply. I don't apply much pressure in general, but once I get a good TNT result, I really start doing almost zero pressure strokes.
It helps me to add some swiftness to my stroke, although an experienced honer like Randydance often advices against it. But I really can notice how the keenness increases every couple of strokes with that method. I keep a little box with a strand of clean hair, next to me for doing the HHT.
I don't stop till the HHT passes along the entire edge. It's a bit of a dirty version of the HHT, as I need to drag the hair accross the edge a bit, before it catches and pops. It takes me about 50 of those "swift" strokes back and forth, to get from the TNT to the crude HHT.

The Blue:
I only use the blue with a not too dense slurry. With water it's great to practice the stroke, and if you really do a lot of strokes it will eventually remove the DMT's scratch marks, but if you seek further refinement of the edge, you really need a slurry.

From where I start on the Blue, after 50 to 100 laps with slurry, the edge maxes out at a given level of keenness. That's when it's time to go to a yellow coticule, used with water only.

Different razors, different results?
Well yes, but in my experience, all razors so far easily reached shavereadiness with the aforementioned method. Differences emerge in what lies beyond that level. Some razors can be pushed further up the sharpness envelope and still keep good edge retention. The further you step into the realm of ultimate keenness, the more unpredictable it becomes how a razor responds to a certain treatment (such as stropping on CrO). But all my razors shave arm hair off the DMT, and they all shave well off the coticule.


Bart.

I expect to shave arm hair when working with a broken-in D6E, at skin level. This is when I can pass the marker test and TNT at the same time, and am using very light finishing strokes.

Well I will definately go back to the DMT in the future, maybe not with the current razor, we'll see how she looks in the end.

Soft strokes may be the key. I am still pretty new to this and tend to be a bit heavy handed.

Given I have done several hundred strokes, I have noticed the blue removing the scratch pattern with just water. I didn't want to use a slurry because of their tendency to max out at a certain level. Before I got the DMT I used a slurry to remove metal faster. I figure now that I can set a bevel on a lower grit I will make up for the lack of slurry by doing more laps. To be honest I don't mind doing several hundred laps, I like it.

Bart, in your experience does using a blue slurry after the DMT provide an edge that is superior to simply doing a lot of strokes with just water or is it just faster?

Originally Posted by JCitron

Bart, in your experience does using a blue slurry after the DMT provide an edge that is superior to simply doing a lot of strokes with just water or is it just faster?

If you're just going to remove the scratch pattern from the DMT, you might as well jump straight to the coticule with water. It does that job better and faster than a Blue with water.
In fact, for a while, that's just what I did, before finishing my edges on a strop with Chromium Oxide. This resulted in good shaveready edges.
But than I started doing tests without the CrO, and found that using the blue with slurry in between the DMT and the coticule with water, really resulted in keener edges.
Using a coticule with slurry in between the DMT and the coticule with water, resulted in the opposite: those edges were less keen.
That's part of the enigmatic behavior of the coticule: it's fast with slurry, but it maxes out at a certain level. The blue does that too, but the maxed out level is significantly keener.

I have not tried the use of a blue with only water before the coticule, but it is a multitude slower with water than with slurry. Too slow in my opinion to do anything beneficial. As I stated before, a Coticule with water is faster than a Blue with water.

If you're interested you can read my original post about the experiments honing without and with the blue being part of the progression.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/advan...tml#post246781

Bart.

Originally Posted by Bart

found that using the blue with slurry in between the DMT and the coticule with water, really resulted in keener edges.


I have not tried the use of a blue with only water before the coticule, but it is a multitude slower with water than with slurry. Too slow in my opinion to do anything beneficial.

Bart.

That makes two of us that find positive results in blue with blue slurry. I've been enjoying using my blue slurry stone. The blue makes slurry faster than any of the other naturals I have at the moment.

Chris L

The advantage of having several coticules is that any can serve as a rubbing stone for any other and you get both get lapped at the same time.

The DMT6E is 1200 grit. I think it is normal that you don't get a shaving edge off of it. That's not what it is menat for. the ~1000 grit level in honing is to make sure the bevels are set correctly and touching each other in a sharp edge. After that, the purpose of honing is to ploish away the scratch patterns of the 1000 grit stage and to smoothen the edge so that it becomes both sharper and smoother.

The Blue is a 4K, and since it is a very slow cutter, it also polishes to a reasonable level, so getting a shaveable edge of the blue is to be expected.

Well I decided that there is plenty of time to experiment later so rather than spend more time using just water on the blue I decided to use some slurry. I don't have a slurry stone so I just rubbed the stone on the DMT a little, worked very nicely.

The edge is definitely coming along. Hopefully this weekend I can spend some time finishing it up for my Sunday shave. Thank you all for the wonderful advice.

On a side note, when I rubbed the blue on my DMT I noticed a pretty good scratch down the middle of the blue leading me to think that either there was some grit there, or the is a spot on the DMT that needs more breaking in. It's odd that something that feels so smooth to the touch could leave such a scratch. I have since run a screw driver over the entire thing a few times and sharpened a couple pocket knives. Hopefully that took care of it.

Yes, the D6E is a very good slurry builder.
No problem whatsoever using it, if you're without a dedicated nagura stone.

I stumbled across this older post of mine and decided to post an update. That blade ended up being one of my top shavers.

I have since used the dmt6E on all my hone jobs since then and it has varied a bit from blade to blade. I did a couple NOS blades out of Mass. and they cut hairs with ease right off the 1200. I find the 1200 is great for setting bevels on more hollowed blades. I have been going at it on a W&B 1/4 hollow with some chips and it's a painfully slow process.