Thread: "Touching Up" Guidelines?

In all respect:
There is no substitute for getting acquainted with your hones, and that counts double for natural hones. Those of us that have, can fill thread after thread with recipes and generalizations about our honing, and believe me, we will. But those recommendations will always remain no more than a light beacon on a misty ocean. No newcomer is dismissed from doing his own homework.

A few examples:
You might still be happily shaving with a razor, when I am already on the hones, "in urgent need of a touch-up".
Your Coticule may release the faintest hint of garnets, even when used with water, while mine may not.
Your idea of zero pressure might be quite different than mine.
Your razor may be a resilient hone-buster, and mine might be a "Double Buck" (sic), that already becomes sharp when you keep it in a drawer next to a hone.
I might be someone, that tries a tool once, says "nah" and goes out to buy another. You might be someone that hangs in for month after month and achieve successes you couldn't have imagined during the first month of use.

Now...lighting the beacon:

the cross section of an edge is a triangle. We want the tip of the triangle to be sharp and well defined. The closer we come to our desired end result, the more subtle our shaping tools need to be. In reverse correlation, those subtle tools get us nowhere when we start using them too early. Doing a touch up, is in essence nothing more than repeating the same thing you did last time when the edge was at that level. (Ron already pointed that out in a much more concise English than I'll ever master). Hence: If your Coticule got you there in the first place, it 'll get you there again. The only thing you need to learn to assess, is how far to fall back to pick up the edge. It is clear that it depends on a number of criteria:
1. How dull did you allow the razor to get?
2. Did you introduce convexity on a pasted strop?
3. Does your shaves introduce a number of small microchips in the edge of the razor in question, that build up shave after shave?
4. How sharp was the razor initially. Was it only barely qualifying for stepping up to the Coticule with water, or did it meet the required keenness of the previous hone with "keenness to spare"?

All questions that need to be answered on a one by one basis.
That said, for my personal razor collection, my abrasive beard, and the hones I use, I always need to fall back further than a Coticule with just water. Every 10 to 30 shaves, depending on the razor, if it starts to show signs of deterioration, I just rehone it. It usually takes 20-30 laps on a Coticule with light slurry, and whatever I do next to build up the keenness again. Takes me less than 15 minutes.
I strop 20 laps on linen and 60 on leather before each shave. When the edge starts showing signs of deterioration I might do 60 laps on the linen. Often that gets it going for a little while longer.

Bart.