Hone progression of a DA (magnification pics)

[pjrage]

All the DA talk in the DA quality thread got me to want to try at my DA again. I had a lot of trouble grinding the shoulder and honing it when I was first getting into honing. I had shaved with it once but it was definitely nothing spectacular. One look under the scope and I could see why.. I did a terrible honing job the first time. It looked something like a 6k finish across the whole thing, yuck.

Anyway, I honed it up tonight and along the way snapped a few shots. Again, I'm just putting my digital camera up to the scope, so they certainly could be better pics, but you get the idea. The edge looks better with my eye in the scope than it seems to in the pics, but oh well. Also, just a note, none of the pics are of the exact same spot, but the bevel/edge was pretty uniform anyway. I'm far from an expert honer, and I still have a lot more to learn, but it came out pretty good IMO... I can't wait for the shave tomorrow. I think I could have spent a bit more time on it to get out some of the deeper scratches, but I got lazy. We'll see how she shaves.

Here are the pics, roughly 85x:

Set the bevel with a DMT 1200:


Sharpened with the Norton 4k:


Polished it up with the Norton 8k:


Went to a blue green escher just for kicks and pics, even though I normally skip it now that I have the nakayama... this one looks much better in the scope:


Finished it up with a dark kiita with nashiji nakayama... again looked better in the scope:


After 100x on TM smooth cotton:


After 80x on TM red latigo: