Thread: Coticule dulling razor?

I've had good luck so far setting bevels with my DMT 1200, and then sharpening/polishing with my norton 4k/8k and chinese 12k. I've been able to get razors to easily pop hairs on my arm/leg and shave me comfortable and smooth.

I recently acquired a bbw/coticule combo (4"x2" FWIW) and tried it for the first time last night on my henckels razor. The henckels was previously shaving pretty good, but I felt like it could have been a little bit better, so I figured, hey, perfect time to give the coticular a whirl. After ensuring the coticule was lapped, I immediately went at the razor with water only for 30 laps and then felt the edge. It was duller? Or, at least, it would no longer pop any leg hairs, which has become my goto test as it is repeatable and reliable so far. It would just glide through the hair without cutting or grabbing So I did another 30, no improvement, same edge, another 30, no improvement, same thing. Looking at it under 60x, the scratch patterns didn't look that bad to me, I mean, not as smooth as after the chinese 12k but roughly similar to after the norton 8k.

It was really eluding me so I decided to go back to square one. I hit the DMT 1200 to reset the bevel figuring maybe it was never set or something else was going on. About 20 strokes there until it was super sharp. It passed the TNT with flying colors, and passed the TPT, digging into my thumb pad pretty easily, feeling very sticky. It was nearly popping leg hairs above skin level at this point, but not reliably so (typical for after setting the bevel). This is when I'll normally move on to the norton 4k/8k and do pyramids until it's easily popping leg hairs.

But at this point, I moved to the BBW with slurry for 50 passes, then another 50 adding water until it was eventually just water. That whole time it was getting sharper, similar to the 4k norton level. Great, so far so good. Then I hit the coticule with water only for 100 light passes, 30 at a time. The weird thing is that this seemed to dull the blade? After the first 30, it seems MAYBE a little sharper than coming off the BBW, but after the next 30 it was feeling duller again?! It basically stopped popping hair whatsoever at this point. Same as when I first tried the coticule with water. After another 40 strokes, it was still basically the same. It's as if the coticule is making the edge worse?

I did try shaving with it anyway, just for the heck of it, and it pulled a bit... my first shave where the razor pulled, actually - guess I've been lucky even since my first honing. I gave it 20 laps on CrOx just for giggles and it actually shaved me pretty well after that, but still could be improved.

Any thoughts on why the coticule would be dulling the edge? Something I'm not getting?