Thread: Testing my long Swaty

Even though I've had the stone for a while now, today was the first day I shaved with blades off my long Swaty. I was shave testing blades, but, in a way, also testing the Swaty.

So let me start with a bit about the hone. She is about 8 x 2 x 1/2. I only lapped the front side, so my actual honing surface is more like 7 x 2. The hone has two lines of text; the first line says "FRANZ SWATY" and the second says "MARIBOR, JUGOSLAVIEN." I lapped the front with a DMT C and then rubbed the Swaty up against my C12K (or Natural Chinese polishing stone, if you prefer) to get rid of the scratch marks.

So, back to the testing. The first blade I used was a 5/8 Wostenholm frameback (of the traditional frameback design, the Swedish looks). I started on that blade with my normal progression: King 1K, BBW slurry (diluted until BBW with water), coticule with water. Then, instead of going to my C12K, I went to the long Swaty with water for 25 laps. This test was to see what kind of a final polish the Swaty could put on a blade.

The second blade was an 8/8 W&B "For Barber's Use" wedge. With this one, I set the bevel on my 1K and then went straight to the Swaty with water for about 100 passes (rinsing off the hone and blade every 25 strokes or so). I did this because I've always heard that in addition to being a good polisher, Swaty's are supposed to be pretty fast cutters.

On to the shave. I'd not shaved in about a week or so, so I had a fair bit of a beard going on. I started off WTG on my right cheek with the Wosty. Great shaving all the way - passed the shave test with flying colors. I then went to my left WTG with another blade that was not part of the test (she's not quite there). Finally, it was time to pull out the W&B, which I was most interested in. I was running a TTC (Towards the Chin) + upper lip pass, so it was a bit of WTG, some XTG, and a bit of ATG from my neck up to my chin. I saved this bit for the W&B because it is, on my face, the toughest hair and also the most sensitive bit. I have to say, I was quite impressed. There was a little pulling on my upper lip (nothing noteworthy elsewhere), but still an acceptable shave. I think that with another 25-50 laps on the Swaty, she'd have been there.

So, here are my early conclusions. This two lined, long Swaty works great as a final polisher. She's also a pretty quick cutter, and could quite possibly be worked into my honing progression in the middle as well as towards the end, or perhaps replace the BBW/coticule. I realize that running in excess of 100 laps seems like a lot, but considering that I would not have to raise a slurry, worry about diluting the slurry, switch between three stones (BBW/coticule and a finishing hone), it's really not a bad tradeoff.

I want to play more with that W&B to see how many more passes on the Swaty are needed to get the blade into top form. I also want to do some comparisons between my C12K and the Swaty to get a sense of which edge I prefer. What I can say now, though, is that I've very happy with this stone and very impressed with what she can do.