Feeling pretty good...but a question
OK, so last weekend was a three-day weekend, so I had plenty of time to play around with my toys...I mean, work hard on my very important projects. ;) I got a couple of my razors honed up, and I think I did ok!
I worked on the Torrey from this thread first. I used Glen's tips for honing an eBay blade, as this one was, and progressed to a BBW/Coti refinement a la Bart's Honing Method in the wiki. I finished on a 12k Shapton pro and CrOx. The partial test shave was good, not great, and then I did a full shave yesterday and got a very nice shave. It looks like the very tip isn't quite as sharp as the rest of the blade (there is a wee bit of a smile) so I'll need to go back to the hones to get better consistency, but it was definitely a success in my book!
The other razor is the crazy Japanese-made spike point from this thread. I started the same way on this one, but I used a King ceramic 4k instead of the BBW, and some 8k lapping film instead of the coti. Again, I finished up on the 12k and CrOx. This blade wasn't quite as keen as the Torrey, I think, and the heel on this one was kind of rough, so I'm going to drop back down and try to reset the bevel. But, again, as this is only maybe the 4th or 5th razor I've honed, I'm not at all dissatisfied.
I did learn quite a bit from this, which is of course my real goal. For example, my technique with smiling blades does need a lot of work. Also, the microscope is really helping me understand the way that the hones I have deal with scratch patterns. I'm also liking the King 4k hone I got. It seems to work well with the 1k diamond plate I use (I have a King 1k, but it seems to be WAY too slow...).
Now here's my question. When honing from the very beginning, while setting the bevel, Glen recommends angled laps, heel first and NO x strokes. How do you adapt this for a smiling blade? Go ahead and do X strokes? I tried adding a little "swoop" at the end of the angled lap to get that tip on my Torrey, but it looks like it didn't work that well.
Any advice you might have would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jim