Just a little Shapton review

[FloorPizza]

Well, I've honed about twenty five blades on my new Shaptons now. Enough to finally form an opinion on them.

I gotta admit, I wasn't impressed at first. I had a hard time transitioning from my DMT's to the Shaptons. It turns out that pressure is key. The "use no pressure when honing" mantra has been repeated among these forums so many times. I guess I'm gonna have to agree to disagree with this. As I mentioned in another thread, I have "benign tremor", or shaky hands. The entire time I honed on the DMT"s, I concentrated on using the very lightest pressure I possibly could; just enough to accurately guide the blade down the hone. Using this light of pressure on the Shaptons simply did not work. I wasn't getting anywhere. So I *increased* the pressure, albeit very slightly. This immediately changed things around.

In addition to the increased pressure, I've found it necessary to "refresh" the surface of the Shaptons quite often. Just a quick rub with one of the other Shaptons is enough to refresh the surface. It seems the key is swarf... if you aren't getting any swarf, it's time to refresh the surface. Seems pretty basic, but yours truly managed to hone for like twenty minutes with no swarf before the realization hit me.

Coming off of the 1k Shapton, I'm getting a crude passing HHT. The scratch pattern that the 1k Shapton leaves in the blade is soooo much more uniform than the DMT. Honestly, I think it's possible to cut a thinner bevel on the 1k Shapton than you can on a DMT. I say this because I can consistently get a blade much sharper on the Shapton than I can on the DMT.

So how much pressure? Hmm.. Recently, someone posted a video showing them honing on a coticule bout. There was quite a bit of "wow, that's alot of pressure" feedback from the guys here on the forum. I can't find that video right now, but if you're familiar with it, I'd say that's about the same amount of pressure I start out with on each Shapton grit. Then I do laps with decreasing pressure until I'm done with that stone. The Shaptons give great feedback. They pretty much tell you when you are done with each stone. A quick verification with the microscope confirms this.

The 16k is a great finishing stone. I can't wait to compare the coticule's edge to the Shapton 16k. On about half the blades, I've gone right from the 16k to the strop, the other's I've taken to .25 diamond paste first. I have to admit I'm a diamond fan; I really like the edge off of .25 diamond, and have yet to get the "too harsh" feeling that seems to be the dominant sentiment regarding .25 diamond around here, but then again, I lean toward the *really* sharp edge (like a factory shavette) as being most comfortable, even if it does leave a few weepers behind. My beard is extremely coarse, and the easier it is to cut through it, the better (for me, at least). I've had no problems getting blades to darn near shavette sharp. Increasing the laps on leather seems to really decrease the weepers caused by this sharp of a blade, while still maintaining the overall sharpness. What AFDavis says about leather really is true, "The strop is for the comfort of your face." And for you guys that don't have a fabric strop... get one. Glen kept mentioning to me that his stropping routine always included linen passes. I am SOLD on linen before leather, especially if you like a *really* sharp blade like I do.

There is a great difference in the blades I've sharpened with the DMT's vs. the Shaptons. In my mind, the Shaptons were a great investment. They are just *that* superior to the DMTs in final edge quality and comfort. I had no idea that such variations were possible; I thought sharp was sharp. pfffft. Not even close. The edge you can get off of a good quality set of stones is simply amazing.