Quote Originally Posted by JCitron View Post
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.